


Alyeska Wild Cards (Dead Man's Hand)

by Maggie_Nowakowska



Series: Masters of the Game: Lando Calrissian [2]
Category: Star Wars - All Media Types
Genre: Gen, Sabacc; MILLENNIUM FALCON
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-06-21
Updated: 2016-06-21
Packaged: 2018-06-09 22:10:31
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 23,744
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6925303
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Maggie_Nowakowska/pseuds/Maggie_Nowakowska
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In the 1980s, word got out in Star Wars fandom that Lando Calrissian had lost the Millennium Falcon to Han Solo in a card game.  A local tall tale about Alaska Airlines having its roots in a wilds-of-Alaska card game inspired this story about snow and ice storms, a tough card game with prospectors, and one between two friends.</p><p>Lando’s age was not known when this story was written, so I gave him a few years on Solo, making this...</p><p>A <b>Young Han Solo Story</b>.</p><p>“Alyeska Wild Cards” was written in 1992, before there were many pro SW books, let alone a large Extended Universe (and, this is not an Extended  SW Universe story).  It was written when any action, any history, any relationships that were not shown or mentioned in the first three SW movies were invented by and for fans alone.  In their stories, fan writers sometimes incorporated hints, clues, suggestions, and speculations (Han had been a Fleet Academy cadet once?!) in interviews, in articles, or books written about the SW phenomenon, but the movies were the only "canon" we had.</p><p>“Alyeska Wild Cards” has been revised by the author, and updated to include some references to "Star Wars" movies and animation released after 1983.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Alyeska Wild Cards (Dead Man's Hand)

_Alyeska's mag fields are lousy; Alyeska's weather, perverse.  Alyeska's surface makes the damned scream for mercy, but below ground is far, far worse.  Pilots, they say, turn grey in a landing; miners age five years for one, but — if miners outlive their contracts' fulfillment, and if market-bound freighters make space in one piece, incredible fortunes can be had for the taking._

_Lando Calrissian hated the place.  Han Solo thoroughly loathed it.  Chewbacca the Wookiee laughed at their greed as cash, hard cash, from precious gems by the handful brought the crew of the_ _MILLENNIUM FALCON_ _to Port Dire again and again and again and again._

 

**Part One—Lando**

 

"Han, blast it!  Pull up!  Pull up!"  Lando Calrissian caught himself grabbing at power bars and toggles and snatched back the reflexes of a spacer locked away from his starship’s controls.

"Nervous, Cap'n?"  Han Solo snickered.

Lando stared at the younger man, damning the unholy gleam in his pilot’s eyes as the _MILLENNIUM FALCON_ screamed its descent into hell.  His fingers longed to, ached to, steal command of his ship from his pilot, but the _FALCON_ ran too deep in Alyeska's atmosphere to take the time that he’d need to wring Solo's neck.

Calrissian looked away from temptation.  He couldn't say when his patience with joy-ride acrobatics had burned out.  All he knew was that he resented other people gambling with his future for just another damn adrenalin rush.

"Chewie!" Lando yelled though the cockpit entry instead.  "Get up here and kick some sense into your flyboy!"

"We ditch this landing, Calrissian, and you owe me more than you can pay."

Over his shoulder, Lando caught the reflection of Han's shadowed face in the cockpit viewscreen.  There was nothing hilarious in Solo's tone now.  The last time they talked of cash _—_ Calrissian tried to remember  _—_ how much credit had Han insinuated sat in his account against payment on his own ship?

 _Well, that's just fine_ , Lando put aside his calculations before surprise caught him short.   _He can go and turn his own bird into a metal frycake against the side of some lousy planet where_ _—_

The freighter pitched to port.   _Dignity be damned,_ Lando dove at the boards he had lost control of too long ago to remember.

But Han compensated without a word and left Calrissian empty-handed.  

"Con's a con, Han," Lando insisted with a grimace.  "Nothing dared, nothing lost.  And Alyeska's a huge backside to nowhere."

"We got people waiting on us down there, Captain." Solo rapped at his headset.  “Try the comm again, will you?  All I’m getting now is static.”

Lando stared at Han.  "We don't owe those miners one crooked credit!  Don't give me that responsibility talk, you, of all _—_ "  A bank of crimson lights flared above the navi-comp.  "Dammit, Han!"

Solo swung around and out of the pilot's seat to reach the side panels; he found Lando at the tones.  Nose to nose they stood, two hands on the over-ride, neither giving the sparest hint of standing down.

The freighter groaned.

"Nothing dared," Solo needled, "nothing gained...Captain."

Metal moans rippled through the holds to the 'pit.

"Money's nothing if you're dead," Calrissian snapped.  "Stars! I've got another Jas Kalber on my hands!"

The comparison with the infamous speed demon startled Han.  "Gundark, Lando!" Solo blurted away the ferocity in his eyes, "Jas was an old man."

 _Wow-wwooww-wwwooowww_ , sang the engines.

"Forty-two when he crashed, you jet jockey.  I intend to live a few years more than that!"

 _Yeewow-wooww-wow!_  The _FALCON_ swung wide to starboard.  Calrissian and Solo lurched out of the confrontation.  Chewbacca fell into the room, his howl matching the ship.  The freighter spun into Alyeska's roaring atmosphere and Captain and pilot and Wookiee all tumbled to the controls of their wild-flying bird.

 

"Never again," Lando vowed when Han found the _FALCON_ a safe berth in the battered bays of Port Dire.

Any relief he had felt when the landing gear set down solid vanished as men and Wookiee peered at the encampment from the frosty hangar entrance.  No one, living or droid, had given them coordinates or hailed them from the hangar office.  Lights along other bays were nothing more than eerie streaks of glowing snow in the winds that flayed the settlement.  Drifts raced across the unseen roadways, sculpting cold, monstrous white shapes where droids and machinery ought to be.  

In the distance, where the trading pit entrance should be, all they saw was a thin, wavering flare of pale light.

Lando looked at Han.

The flush from having proven himself one hell of a pilot was fading quickly from Solo's face.  "Let's get this over," the Corellian muttered.  He handed a pack to Chewbacca and tucked the assay droid tighter under his arm.

Lando harrumphed away an urge for sarcasm.  Alyeska was trouble enough for anyone.  Hunching his shoulders deeper into his coat-length weatherwrap, he strapped the brilliant safety-yellow quilting tighter around his wrists.  With a last look up at snow sifting through stalled iris blades in the hangar roof, Captain Lando Calrissian slung his display across his back, pulled up his hood, fitted his goggles, and left his good ship to the mercy of mechanics and luck.

The _FALCON’s_ crew hurried their way to shelter dodging the drifts and cold overhangs that broke under wet weight and the strength of the howling winds.  Chewbacca was a jagged shadow of fur, flying across the frozen ground.  The two humans ran after him as best they could, each man shuddering within his weatherwrap, hoods frozen to eyebrows, eyes hurt and watering as the wind knifed through inadequate goggle frames.

 

In the main pit, they gained poor respite.

Churning, over-heating machinery whined behind shaky damp walls.  Ugly digger droids, shoved haphazardly against the walls, muttered sullenly among themselves.  Piles of bulky, weather-battered gear cluttered the flooring, and everywhere were miners, sweaty and swearing and clutching bottom-heavy, multi-strapped gempacks.  Their impatience to start trading pushed hard against the edgy examination they gave the three spacers.

The usual center space had been cleared for the _business at hand_.  Quietly, with a stop at the controller and the payment of fees, Lando, Han, and Chewbacca slipped into their roles of banker, barker and guard.

Calrissian shed his coat and smoothed down his heavy suede tunic; he managed a smile, a cheery comment on the current market.  Solo woke up the assay droid, leaving frozen gloves dangling from its frosted sides while he set up Lando’s display rig.  Chewbacca, fur hanging in tight, icy locks that dripped into a puddle at his feet, unclipped his crossbow from the back of hid bandoleer and rested it along his arm as he struck an intimidating pose behind the men.

The game was second-nature to each of them.  The strain of the fearsome ride down and a troubled landing slipped from Lando's shoulders as smoothly as gems would soon slide over the raised-edge white satin runner he spread across the display tabletop.  The sound of Solo calling out figures — here came the first miner's grumble about the _FALCON’s_ rates, a complaint to be matched and trumped by the abashed innocence on Han's face — and the promise of hard cash overrode all hesitation.

 _Let Alyeska's devil_ _winds shriek,_ Lando defied the weather.  Fast flying, slick words, sure hand and paw on the weapons:  Lando and Han and Chewbacca were the three to beat wherever the _FALCON_ happened to roam.   _We are one damn fine team._

"What damn fine glitter," Calrissian muttered over the first bag upended on the black fabric show cloth.  "Good enough for — wha'd'y'say, Han?"

"Hm?"  Having dropped his weatherwrap atop Lando's, Han stretched, the competence of his long, lean figure as apparent as that of the wicked blaster strapped to his right thigh.  Han leaned on the table, careful to keep his palm off the runner, his intensity pure and holy and exquisitely larcenous.  He whistled, "Hey, Hassel Bay, Cap'n.  That's a fact."

"Hassel Bay, be damned," the miner yelped.  "That's Coruscant-Core quality, blast'y!"

Solo blanched.  "C-Core?" Solo straightened, astonishment overwhelming his features.  "You _—_ you think we're crazy enough to trade at C-Core?"

"Crazy 'nough to run this crusher!"

"Last _I_ noticed," Han exclaimed with a broad sweep of the surrounding dimness, "Alyeska's got no megaflash cannon on these ice hills.  You want Coruscant prices, you can damned well wait for the Impy crew heading this way."

"Yo?  Well, maybe I'll just do that." The miner reached for his jewels.  "The boys here been thinking you all run too damn light a measure —"

The miner found a fist grabbing damp lapels on his undercoat.  In harmony with the Wookiee's rumble, Solo’s voice was not playful.  " _Light_ , did you say, friend?"

"Han..." Calrissian murmured with patient concern, quietly balancing his assessment of the crowd's mood against Solo's excellent, if sometimes over-eager, instincts.

Han let go of the miner.  Brightness returned to his face.  "Sorry," he smiled.  "Just came in from Tatooine, friend, and Hutts tend to leave a man touchy.  So," Solo finished gathering up the miner's gems.  "We'll just leave the daubbleballs for you to exchange with the Imps.   _ISS GAVEN_ , isn't it this time 'round?  There's a hard quartermaster on board I've heard, but hey, he's honest.  Right?"

"Who —" the man’s sputters echoed down the line, " _—_ said anything 'bout not trading daubble?"

"You did, friend," said Lando softly.  "If we don't trade straight on legals, why would we trade illegals that you could turn and tag on us to Imperial excise spotters?"

An unspoken agreement between miner and trader sighed through the crowd, dulling the complaints:   _No one in a right mind makes Alyeska and no one in a right mind works Alyeska, and no one does all that, then leaves the good stuff behind because it’s proscribed goods!  Let's all stay happily, richly, unquestionably illegal together, shall we?_

"You just go ahead and sign next year's haul over to the customs patrols," Han continued, tucking the last gem away in the man’s battered pouch; he dangled the lumpy bag between him and the miner.  "We'll just stand back and laugh."

"Smart ass son of a shorting _—_ "

Solo was in the man's face instantly.  "Call us skimmers, will you?"

"Han, Han!" Lando interrupted.  He grabbed at Solo's shirt sleeve, making a show of his need to keep a hot-headed Corellian in place.  He half-believed it himself; Solo sometimes came up with the damnedest ideas about what they did for a living.

"Han; friend miner.  We're all edgy today with the weather.  Lay those glitters out again.  I know they're worth a second look, and I've got the say on this deal, not my good man here."

Lando smiled and Han grumped and the miner did as he was told.  They all peered at the recalibrated readout.  "I think," Calrissian agreed, "yes, I think we can afford Bright on these beauties."

"Lando!"

"Han, fair's fair."

Solo threw up his hands and turned away.  The miner rumbled a begrudging satisfaction and the deal was set.

"Next!" Han called out with a loud and exaggerated sigh.

Calrissian brushed the runner smooth.  He relished the moment.  Han was no gambler to sustain a bluff, but his sense of self-preservation was as sound.  The verve and finesse with which Solo rose to match whatever Lando dealt him was beauty to behold.

He allowed himself his own sigh.  Coruscant-core level bright was due for a quantum increase by the time the next government trader landed, by which time the _MILLENNIUM FALCON_ would be long gone — but the miners didn't know that.  Three landings' profit in one, and no more crazy risks.  Lando liked that, and so would Han — once Lando told him.

 

Other developments that afternoon were not so satisfying.  The toll of injuries among incoming miners was high, and all the exclamations over stories of arduous journeys into port left Lando feeling queasy.  The bravado he expected in such recitations was missing, the accumulation of detail devastating in the way of truth, not exaggeration.  That the shelter's power kept fading in and out, helped nobody's nerves.

Halfway through the line of miners, the walls banged loud, too loud.  Miners hit the ground and rolled.  Solo dove behind the table; Lando spread flat across the glittering display.  Like a shaggy tree, Chewbacca swayed with the tremors rippling through the flooring.

 _*quarter-length away*_  warned the Wookiee for those who could understand. Lando did not thank him for such news.

 

The last trade was made with a miner who came in less one good eye.  Lando weighed the man's bag while his snowburn was seen to; when the deal was done, when the painkillers had not yet cut in, two friends carried him off.  

Calrissian excused himself then, leaving Solo and Chewie to see to the stash.

He came back quickly enough.  Word at the entry wasn't good because there was no word at all from any far-lying claim.  "Listen to me," Lando insisted when Solo didn't seem to hear his report.  He leaned across the tabletop to where Han sat, leaned deep into the table’s light.  "There's a hemiforce storm coming in, Pilot.  Not even the _FALCON_ can take off in that kind of trouble."

"Will you move?" Solo said. "I'm trying to read this hands-on calc.  If you'd upgrade the droid, I wouldn't have to do this with fingers."

Calrissian slammed his hand flat on the calc's colored tones.  "Are you deaf?  Even the vets here are scared.  It's not worth staying for stragglers." He paused, lowered his voice.  "Buddy, I've got things to do on Paridiso."

Solo, who had gone still, slowly picked up the intrusive hand and moved it aside.  "If you don't mind, Lando, Paridiso is where you lose money, not make it." He shrugged.  "It's just weather."

"You can fly through anything."

"I can fly through anything."

"Like hell you —"

"And that Imp cutter _—“_ Han didn’t even look up. _“—_ _GAVEN,_ this time, right?" He went back to his arithmetic. "Is not due in before any storm runs its race.  If we have to, we can sit it out and be gone easy as nothing.  Relax or flake off, Captain.  One or the other."

Lando shoved himself away from the table.  "Dammit, Han _—_ "

"No, you dammit stop!"  Solo was suddenly standing in Lando’s face again, nose to nose and furious.  Close to Calrissian's ear, he added, "We agreed to run this place one more time as long as we took in over 85 before any Imps spoiled the game and I am not losing out on my last chance to skin these dirt-eaters alive."

"Keep your voice down — how do you know?!"

"You think I don't know how to make a good profit?” Han matched Calrissian's hiss. “I've got the same brains you do, pal.  The minute that cutter makes planet with the new rates, we're outta business here.”

Lando tried to get a word in. 

“No, _you_ listen!” Han insisted.  “Chewie says the Com man says that bastard Abalardiani has just called in from one klik away, and I'm telling you that the _FALCON_ goes nowhere till I've got my share of his glitterpack in hand!"

Damn.  The haul was so good, Lando hadn't realized that Hot Rocks hadn't shown.  The man’s time on Alyeska was not so long as some, but his take was prodigious.  He turned away from the Corellian’s screwed-up, indignant expression.  He’d seen that look enough to last him a lifetime.  When Abalardiani dropped his load, the _FALCON_  stood the chance of making three times what it had the last run.

And, since when had Solo paid such close attention to trade gossip?  Why hadn't he come running with the news of the new rates?  Oh hell. For the same reason, Lando hadn’t mentioned it to him.  Always trust a soul to look out after itself _—_ the first and only uncontested rule of the sporting life.  Lando knew it; Han knew it.

Calrissian looked back at Han.  It was definitely time Hotshot got his own rig.  Lando didn't relish the Corellian’s competition in the markets they ran. However, he wasn't inclined to wish that competition eliminated, which could happen, if he and Han kept chewing at each other like this.  

Across the room, the few remaining miners in the main pit stood huddled around the comm station, listening to weather-blown static and looking over at the shielded entry that strobed too often for comfort.  It was time for all of them to get out of this place.  Picking up his weatherwrap, Lando repeated his earlier advice.  "Han, old friend, money is not everything."

"Maybe for you.  Not for me."

"You can't _spend_ it if you're dead."

"Speaking of _money_ ," Solo sat back down.  "Ship is asking for that overhaul now."  He peered sideways at the satin runner and brushed a glittery crumb onto a glue sheet kept at hand for precious droppings.  "Each aft P-Pak spec hot-lined red all the way down.”

"You had to remind me." Lando saw the day's take piled next to Han and turned away to deny any temptation to grab and run.  Han had it right.  Clever as he managed to be with his fixes, nothing kept a freighter in one piece when old bones needed replacing.

Solo’s head popped up suddenly, aiming one of his smart-ass smiles straight at Lando.  “I _told_ you they would, and we both know Grekko's shop is gonna sing out for half a Kthou on that repair."

"Yeah, yeah," Calrissian conceded, looking around, trying to locate the room’s entry by the flash of trading pit lights shining through it onto the wall of icy snow piled up right outside.  "We wait on that one —.”  The high pitch of the shelter machinery was distracting.  “Where — what is that noise?"

But Han had finished sliding gems into bags, and was crawling behind and between the display table, noisily stashing everything into the pack.

A new sound, dense as a million insects flying madly together seemed to be falling through the roof. Lando spun around.  "What the hell?!"

* _runnn_ * Chewbacca howled.

The lights flashed blue. The lights died.

"Lando — what the _—_!"

"Chewie!  Where are _—_ "

This time, the walls and ceiling exploded.

 

Pressure and wind blew Calrissian across the sudden darkness.  Boiling waves of snow and ice followed.  Disoriented, ears ringing when he landed, Lando struggled to his feet.  

"Han! Chewie!" he shouted into the dark.  

Gear and equipment and the gods knew what flew about in the winds and snow roaring through the broken trading pit.  Around him, living groans filled the air.  Turning back the way he'd been blown, Calrissian stumbled through the devastation until he jumped back with a shout.

At his feet and in his face, not an arm's length away, blaster fire tore through the shards of warped metal sheeting that knifed across the pit, a blue-laze message to let the universe know that someone intended to be found.

Lando and Chewbacca dug wildly for Han.  Ice spears the weight and length of a man slid fast off the shattered roof, gouging the snow around them.  Machinery broke loose of anchors, crashed about the campsite, smashing through walls, as they staggered back at last, pulling the dazed pilot, gasping and alive, up and into a mean headwind.  

Flying in the dark, a twisted portabox cut a hank of fur from Chewbacca’s mane then ricocheted off Solo’s back, throwing him against Calrissian, tumbling both onto their table, collapsing it under them.

They came to their feet and found a path through the maelstrom to outside.  Hand in hand, Lando pulling Han, they kept together, Chewbacca’s hot breath blowing on their necks, pushing the men forward. A tenth-hour raced by with the storm before the Wookiee, cold cracking in his roar, saw a way through through the lacerating shrieks of weather, and led the men to the last intact shelter half-dug into a hill.

 

Inside the new shelter, behind a shield's erratic beam, and amid pandemonium, Lando and Chewbacca took a half hour more to warm Han’s color back to rosy and to count each bone miraculously unbroken.

Calrissian saw twelve more men straggle in, miners not buried by avalanches setting hard as aggregate nor turned back by chilling, rough hail slamming into a body like torpedoes.  Near-dead, they collapsed where they stood and stayed down until hands helped them stagger to their feet and over to thin mats spread across the shelter floor.  

Forty beings found themselves packed into a room built for twenty: one Wookiee, thirty-seven homini men predisposed to misanthropy, two more disinclined toward enforced discomfort.

And here came one last rime-coated figure hulking under a fat pack, falling through the crackling shield, Hot Rocks Abalardiani himself.  With both elbows soon bandaged below torn sleeves and sheet bacta slapped across on a weeping frost burn from nose to ear, the man was seriously worse for the day's experience. And yet, if any human could come through a storm determined on its destruction of Port Dire, that one would be Abalardiani.

 _Thirty_ - _eight_ _miners_ , Lando corrected his count as he wearily folded himself onto the three-mat floor space allotted the _FALCON’s_ crew. _Forty human males total, with a full complement of center-spectrum aggression in each mother’s son of them; one irritated Wookiee; and one storm from hell._

"Gambler's luck, huh?" Han chattered from under an old heat-skin, one of twenty-five found cached in the shelter and claimed by twenty-four miners and the Wookiee.  Solo was frost-burned and he was bruised, but his left arm showed no break on the old miniscan one of the miners packed in.  His concerns hadn't changed.  "Damn, I bet Abalardiani'll be desperate to sell at any price."

Lando took a deep breath.  He was not going to let Solo know how annoying he was.  Plenty of time for that when — if — they got out of this alive.  "Where'd Chewie go?" he growled, searching for a way to stretch his legs that didn't jab a heel of his boot into some stranger's gear.

"Gonna help dig out a storeroom.  One off that far wall.  Hey, I need your minidriver," Han's chilled voice sounded fuzzy.  He patted pockets on his flak vest  "Must’ve lost mine in that avalanche."

"What _—_ why?"

"This rig's powerpack is a mess.  Lucky it fired at all."

"For godsake _—_ don't worry your blaster when we're all so close together!"

"Might be needing it, Cap'n, before this is over," Solo said with a thin grin.  "Tight quarters don't bother me, but you know some people just can't _—_ Hey, I ever tell you 'bout the time I got stuck on a chopped transport with twenty other _—_ naw, forget it."

An urge rose to rile Han by pressing him for the particulars of yet another never-finished tale, but Calrissian let the complaint go, the same as Han dropped his story.  Having satisfied himself years ago that the Corellian was not some Imperial Academy boy out slumming _—_ on the lam, maybe, probably, but no danger to Calrissian's own privacies _—_ Lando supposed he had patience enough to wait till Solo finally outgrew those cadet fatigue jeans he wore before ragging the pilot about old military ties.

 _Still, we wouldn't need that gun if you hadn't insisted we stay_.

Lando located the requested tool in what he had pocketed of their equipment and tossed it over his shoulder.  Behind him, Han cursed, missing the catch with stiff fingers.  Lando smiled, then pulled out an old velvet-wrapped deck of worn cards.  He smoothed the pale blue square of velvet to the edge of the mat and started shuffling.

"Lando?"

"What?"

"Is it me with fever or is it hot in here?"

"You're all right.  It's hot."

"Chewie back with any rations yet?  I could use something to drink."

Came a voice from somewhere over starboard.  "You sports're lucky we let you in, let alone feed you."

Lando was on his feet before Han.  The miner was large and ugly and by Calrissian's reading only half-interested in a fight.  Which was good because once Lando took a look at his pilot staggering into a temper, he forgot the intrusion.

"You, buddy!" Han was pale and not at all as loud as he meant to be.  "You think anyone'd be eating if that Wookiee over there wasn’t digging out that cache, huh?  He's with us and you remember that." Solo waved his captain's sudden examination of his person away.  "Lando, I'm okay."

"Yeah, sure you're okay.  You're asleep pretty damn soon if I have anything to do with it.  Sit down." Of the miner, Calrissian demanded, "You got a drip pack?  We need it."

Surprisingly, the man found a full sack of water and gave it to Lando.  "He gonna make it?" was asked as Solo drank.  "No use wasting juice on them too sick to live through this westerly."

"Nice," coughed the pilot.  "It's just a knock on the head.  Give me a couple turns asleep and I'll get my own next time."

The miner laughed.  "If we ain't melting the walls down by then.  Hah! Hope you fellows got hand picks and thermal gear."

Calrissian and Solo watched the burly man take his hilarity with him into the dimness.  "Funny man," Lando muttered, stuffing his cards in a pocket.  He helped Han resettle the blankets and weatherwraps into a semblance of a bedroll.  "Get that rest now, buddy," he said, not adding his fear that before long, sleep was going to be the deadliest thing in which a body could indulge.

 

"F'godsake, Chewie, watch your step!"  Lando looked away from the Wookiee, waving away a damp stink. “Give Han some room. He’s sleeping off a headache.”

 _*the ‘fresher is a filthy swamp*_ Chewbacca growled back, but he managed to find space to sit and still keep his grimy foot fur offside his mat.  He poked at Calrissian's shoulder.   _*and they want payment for the food*_

"Hey, you buggy furball!" cursed someone nearby in the darkness.  "Keep your mucking paws to yourself!"

Calrissian grabbed for Chewbacca's arm.  "Forget it!"  Dragged to his feet by the angry Wookiee, Lando swung between Chewie and the miner, a hand out to stop both.  "Blast it!  Can't either of you see _—_ "

"What the hell's going on," someone shouted.

"Keep it polite or take a walk!"

"Enough already!” Lando yelled back.  “You," he pointed at the nearest miner, "mind keeping your gear on your mat and we'll mind keeping ours —" he shoved at Chewie's chest "— on ours."

Miner and Wookiee shrugged away the confrontation.

"What did you say again?" Lando asked when Chewbacca managed to sit down full on his mat without waking Solo, or anyone else.  "What about the food?"

 

“Co-op rules,” quoted the bearded man standing guard with a laze-carbine between the overly ripe ‘fresher and a niche carved through the shelter into the hillside, a make-do galley stacked with the flats of emergency rations dug out of the buried cache.  “No payment in, no food out.”

For a moment Lando stared at a stream of melting ice on the wall behind the miner's head.  He remembered a pack full of gems now lost beneath the drifting snow of the trading pit, a share of wealth he’d like to be around to dig out and reclaim.  Then he considered the odds of 38 to 3, even with a Wookiee edge.  "How much?" Calrissian asked, pulling a credit cube from inside his tunic.

"Hard metal.  Hundred each."

 _Thief_.  Lando pulled out a wrapped cake of unalloyed hush-silver and peeled off three slivers.

"Per meal," added the guard.

Calrissian scowled.  Three more thin sheets joined the others on the miner’s own cube.  “You know what that kind of dealing's called, friend?"

Chuckles from the nearby mats then, and a wide, cold smile from the guard, who said, "Sure do, Trader.  Don't we all?"

 

The hours passed; the shelter seemed smaller.  Mechanicals hissed and droids whined and the lights were uncertain.  Anger erupted in small flashes throughout the room, sending out ripples of hostility to tempers as of yet unlit.

"Cut it out, damn'ye."

A hacking sound to Lando's right, then the flat splat of spittle across the floor in front of the _FALCON’s_ three mats.

Lando paused.  Slowly, he looked up from his solitaire.

From two mats over, outside any lamp halo, someone spat again, this time against the face of a nearby fan that shrieked a threat to shut down.  "Shaddup, y’damn droid.  You there, Slick,” said the miner. “Yer cards make'n me nervous."

Lando carefully laid down another card on the damp velvet square.  "Friend," he said evenly, "lots of things here making me nervous."

 

The air grew hotter.  Solo had turned out of the awkward bedroll and lay as far as he could from Chewie who sat purring to himself over the final reassembly of the man's blaster.

After a look over his shoulder to assure himself of his pilot's passivity, Lando stood to loosen his tunic belt and pull a handful of clammy weave away from his sweat-sticky belly. 

For a moment, the air was cooler than his skin, then the damp reasserted itself and prickled wherever it dripped.  Calrissian stretched his legs.  A mistake.  Upon straightening, his insides readjusted, making made their needs known — and no one in a right mind would look forward to using that 'fresher for relief.

 

"Stinking hole," Lando complained when he had maneuvered the small room's manual door closed again.  He pounded the grip hard to keep it shut.  "Any of you ever consider flushing this swamp out more than once a year?"

"Don't need to," claimed a miner straddling a nearby stool.

A second man, his shirt turned out and hanging loose over low-belted leggins, laughed.  "No one needs this shelter so often, and only a day at a time at that."

"Hold your nose," someone sniggered.

"Strip off those fancy pants and you won't need to worry yourself."

"Sorry, friend," Lando advised the half-naked man _—_ shed of their weatherwear, some men were even down to their skivvies _—_ "not my line of business."

"Could've fooled me," came a challenge.

"Who said that?" called Han's voice from across the room.

Three miners on their feet instantly shouted back, "I did!"

Calrissian threw up his hands.  Some people chose the damnedest time to wake up.  "Hold it!  You boys sit down,” he pointed across the room, “and you can just _—_ "

A rasping rumble at Han's side interrupted, under control, but growing louder.

 _Damn, if any of_ _these jokers understand Kazeel_    — Lando's hand sliced the air with the crew's understood two-finger sign for, CUT IT OUT, _BOTH_ OF YOU.

"All I'm asking for," Calrissian said, disarming his signal to gesture broadly at the ‘fresher, "since it looks like we're going to be sharing this space a while longer, is some common courtesy and —"

"Yeah, Bjarke," snarked a new voice, "aim at the hole."

"Hey, I'm just trying to warm up m'toes."

"Put your back to the galley hotbox then," Lando snapped.  "Just in case someone else cares that the food's been piled up next to this boghouse."

"Fussy, ain'tcha?"

"Yeah."

"Beggars can't be choosers, damn'ye." The miner who had first come to the trading table charged up to Lando.  "Y'r damn lucky we don't take back our packs and throw y'to the wind!"

"I'm getting real tired of this, Lando!" Han was definitely awake and coming up fast, no matter a limp; Chewie was right behind.

"And we've been getting real tired of you skimmers and your deals!"

Calrissian caught Solo’s fist, drawn back and ready. " No!"

"Hold it!"

Hot Rocks Abalardiani steamed out of dimness to grab at the belts of two young miners eager to jump the pilot.

"Chewie!" Losing his grip on Han's sweaty bare arm, Lando wheeled Solo into Chewbacca's rising ferocity.  "Don't!"

"Dead brains!" Abalardiani swore. Pulling hard on his dual catch, he swung the miners around,  slamming them against the shelter wall, far side of the ‘fresher.

 _Woow-wwow-wow!_  Machinery behind the walls roared to drown out ten such Wookiees as Chewbacca.  The two miners scrabbled away from the vibrating walls; the Wookiee screeched and leapt over them.  Solo dropped to the floor, his arms wrapped over his head.  Throughout the room, amid screams of doom, bodies dove for cover.

Calrissian and Abalardiani stood back to back, braced against each other, watching the walls vibrate.  The seam beyond the galley bulged.   _Thwong!_  Something snapped and was echoed by a blinding flare from the entry shields.  Someone cursed.  Someone sobbed.  

But the walls did not collapse.  No snow and ice burst through the shields.  In the sudden silence, every breath taken was a bellow.  Slowly, the lights flickered into a steady glow.  A soft, steady wheeze overhead matched the throb of life support.  Only the anger of the wind against the entry tunnel remained to remind all of the danger just passed.

Amid the confusion, Han and Chewie came to their feet together and faced the belligerent miners.

Abalardiani was quicker than Lando to make himself a barrier between the factions.  Built like a freight shuttle and standing as tall as any man in the room, the bushy-haired miner was not easy to knock over.  He worked alone, but he was no hermit.  Friendly, quick with an entertaining story, he was popular with his fellows.  Since the day he appeared in port, Hot Rocks had been the man to settle what trouble arose in Port Dire.

With a jerk of his head, the lead miner dismissed the earlier complaints.  "Man doesn't have to be a greedy so-and-so to know the difference between dirt and clean," Abalardiani said with a nod at Lando.  "That room, brothers, is a pit." Then he glared at his compatriots.  "And I didn't drag my ass back through from The Widows to lose m'pack or m'bones to some damn fool piss fight."

Still, came the insistent complaint, "Should be damn grateful we let them in at all."

“And gave’m a sheet to defrost the hotshot!”

Lando made sure of his hold on Han's arm this time.  Abalardiani reached into the pack of miners in front of him, grabbed, and pulled a young man out by his drooping braces.

"Sit down," Hot Rocks snarled,  "and shut up."

"Both of you," Calrissian hissed.

 

Waiting on the storm dragged on.  Damp air thickened with the murmur of nervous men, the stink of wet clothing, and the malodorous breaths of the 'fresher door opening and closing.

Lando distracted himself from the trickle of sweat down his back by matching the slick-slide of his cards with the steady drip of — liquid water? coolant fluid? — that developed on the wall to his far left.

 _Drip_ -slick, _drip_ -slide, flip a card, _drip_ -slick.

 _Whack!_  Something hit the wall between Lando and the next mat.  Calrissian stiffened.  Beside him, an indeterminate lump of packing slid noisily down the siding to the floor.  Behind him, an ugly, handy, modified blaster snicked free of its holster.

One shot and the whole place would probably come apart; they'd drown, then freeze.

"Someone got a problem?" Calrissian said to no one in particular.

"Told you before.  Stash those cards.  Driving me crazy with'm."

Lando laid down another pip, black on green.  "Asking gets you farther, friend."

"I'll show you what —"

"Sit down, Checky."

At the sound of Abalardiani's voice, the incessant hum of miners' talk hesitated.  When Checky made a noisy retreat, it picked up again, but too low to decipher.  Lando didn't look up.  Couldn't see much in the dark with so many lights out to cut down on heat.

He sighed, "Put it away, Han," and took up his cards for a new throw.

 

"Trader!" Hot Rocks called out before another full hour's turn.  " Bring that deck of yours over here.  I’m thinking, the boys could use some diversion."

 _No, sir._   Calrissian gathered up his deck.  _Ignoring you seems a much better idea._

Abalardiani crossed the cluttered room with the assurance of a hill-hugger.  "We've been talking, Trader,” he said, squatting to the left of Lando's mat.  He flipped back the tails of his unfastened shirt and rested his hands on muscular thighs. “You have our pretties to bet and we have your money.  Let's see who ends up with what when this muther of a westerly blows out."

 _*man's as furry without his clothes as a newborn cub*_  Chewbacca muttered.

Lando looked at Abalardiani but kept shuffling.  Hot Rocks hadn't traded a damn thing; his pack was virgin and fat and would go a long way toward making this trip profitable after all.  Calrissian studied the man, offering consideration of the ploy while figuring Abalardiani's percentage.

Solo sidled up on Calrissian’s right.  "You're crazy, brother," he said, stretching out on the mat.  His back to Lando, Han leaned on an elbow with his vest falling open across his bare chest.  "This is Lady Luck's main man.  He'll take you dirt-eaters for all you've got."

Calrissian scowled, as annoyed by Solo’s freedom to ditch his sweat-soaked shirt as he was by Abalardiani’s idea.  "I hate to point this out, Hot Rocks," he said before Han's challenge caught fire, "but there's a storm full of snow between here and the day's dealings."

Abalardiani smiled for Lando again.  "And you've still got your tunic on."

Immediately, Lando felt better for knowing Han's right arm was unencumbered by wet, clinging cloth, his blaster working and easy to draw.

"So?" 

The miner stroked his beard.  "So, that tells me you've still got a treasure belt full enough to hide, along with that hush-silver block.  Not to mention what bully boy there must have to protect, the way he's fingering that hot-issue stick of his."  Abalardiani canted his head at the far wall where his mat and a large good friend of his rested between two framed travel packs. "And I've still got my stash.  What say we deal a few so everyone walks out of here near to normal?"

"Normal?" Han exclaimed.  "Talk about not knowing when a body's well off.  If we'd sussed that you folks wanted to gamble your packs away instead of trading fair and businesslike, well..."

Laughter at that, unpleasant laughter, from the watching crowd.

Han dismissed the noise with a snort, "Why, the Captain here would have you stripped so fast you —"

"Hot Rocks," Lando overspoke Han's pleasure.  "I think I'll pass." The gleam he saw in Abalardiani's eyes had nothing to do with sport.  Lando had never cared much for games with his life as the prize, and this proposition had all the marks of a sop thrown to the troublemakers in the room.  "It's a bit close here for friendly playing conditions."

From across the room came, "Who said anything about friendly?"

Abalardiani was too good to sound out his own feelings on the subject; his glance in the direction of the interruption spoke for him.  He let a pause fall to highlight the common emotion.

"I'd recommend it highly, trader," said Abalardiani, his expression mild.  "Would give bored boys something to pay attention to.  You know, take consideration off who's a buddy and who's not."

Han came up on a knee, one hand against Lando's shoulder to steady himself, the other on the blaster grip.  "Out of 200 and more that were here," he warned, "the forty that want to walk out the other side of this storm damn well better be buddies."

Lando held out the cards.  "I'll lend you my deck.  Tell the boys to have fun."

"I sometimes play Paridiso, Cap'n," Abalardiani said with a smile.

 _My, what an interesting claim._  Lando didn't believe a bit of it.

And yet.  That would explain Abalardiani's cool confidence, and the occasional, unexpected crispness in his accent.  A lot like Han the man was, with such contradictions of manner and experience.  Funny that Lando hadn't noticed it before.  Hadn't been important before, of course, like Han's leftover uniform that made no difference in the man's behavior or loyalties.  Best, sometimes with that type of soul, to play along and let them trip over their own chosen conditions.

"Four years living off the Trumpeter's bankroll," Abalardiani added. "Still hit the tables, hit them fine, between digs."

Now that declaration complicated the problem considerably.  Lando had never cracked the Trumpeter's inside game.  He wanted to.  He planned to while Solo busied himself putting the _FALCON_ back to in-his-dreams inaugural condition.

A man needed connections to fulfill such an intention.

Han had no trouble figuring the way of Lando's thoughts.  Lando felt a hard hand gripping a warning on his shoulder, matched with a perceptive Wookiee grumble.

YEAH, YEAH, he nodded.  He knew Abalardiani wanted their gems and their credits, no different than the other hotheads here.  But if the man really were a player by Paridiso conventions — well, that changed things.  That true danger existed in taking him for everything Lando could was ... acceptable.  Absolutely.  By any spacer's standards, especially Solo's.

Lando shrugged Han's hand away.  "Prove it," Calrissian said, getting to his feet.

Abalardiani also rose and the room was filled with a sudden flurry of rearrangement.  "Your deal, Captain," he smiled.

There it was again: “Captain,” not “Trader.”  The switch was telling; Abalardiani had a private game already in play.  Lando felt his mind clear, his fingers tingle.

The _FALCON_ crew watched as the miners rigged the remaining lights above a clearing at the shelter center; as mats and lumps of gear, packs and squat folding stools appeared around a make-shift table.  

"I don't like this, Lando," Solo whispered. "I don't like the odds; I don't like the risk."

Calrissian laughed, softly, just for Han.  He glanced over his shoulder, his eyes level with Solo's.  "Listen who talking odds, Pilot.  Who's talking about wanting to fly safe."

From the other side of the readied play space, Abalardiani raised a palm.  "Captain," he called out, "What's your pleasure in the game?"

Lando matched the miner's _READY-TO-PLAY_ hand sign.

"Sabacc, my friend, sabacc."

 

**Part Two—Chewbacca**

Sledgehammer winds.  Hounding hurricane winds, searching for souls, hungry for any life that crouched, hiding huddled, within the planet's snows.  Basso profundo blows _pound-pound-pounding_ against the shelter, shivering with great rolling quakes, its bracing humming high in the warping bitter cold.  Hysterical winds cracking arrhythmic patterns of icy lace — hoarfrost on lightning — in the shield.

Chewbacca lowered his eyes from the brilliant sight of the fractured energies, but he could not close his ears against the wind or the tortured mechanicals that screamed higher than humans could hear.

A scoop out of the ground, that's all this room was, a potential puddle of ice walls filling with life's blood. The air was fetid with machine heat and the foulness of animals too long confined.  Chewbacca could smell the snow and ice melting and freezing and melting and freezing against the shelter's failing roof.  He could hear the floor heave and crack as pockets of wall chemicals froze, could imagine all too well the sound of ice that must burst through the cheap metal sheeting.

The first day had been bad enough; he tracked more of the initial onslaught than any human here could comprehend.  Concentrating on their bleak surroundings, the men had assumed the weather was at its worst when it leveled the fragile superstructures of Port Dire.  Now they knew differently; now, as the storm struck in earnest, even their atrophied ears could hear what the shelter endured.

Chewbacca fantasized the coming screams of the miners, his nerves tense from the hatred they had turned on the strangers in their midst.  Hran, the Captain, himself.  Each of them was a prisoner of beings as hostile as the snow and the ice.

He closed his eyes for a moment — only a second's rest he promised himself, just time to clear his mind of worry.  When a shout jabbed his thoughts, then Hran's loud rejoinder, Chewbacca grumbled awake and leaned forward to glare through the damp fur hanging over his face.  The shouting hesitated.  He pushed his mane back, stroked his crossbow and left his large hand to rest lovingly on the energy chamber below the trigger.

The shouting died down.  Slowly.

 _*a stupid game this sabbac*_ Chewbacca rumbled to no one in particular.  And stupid people, these humans, playing out their obsessive rivalries within a dung pile of a world furious to bury each and every one of them in its hungry flesh.

Through slitted eyes, Chewbacca watched the card players who sat and sprawled in a vague circle of rumpled cushions and bedding.  The Captain sat on a box to the left, Hran to the right, as far apart as this miserably close room allowed.  The arrangement was not of their choosing; Abalardiani and the one called Cheeky sat between them; the others players sorted out from the center on either side.  The foul suspicions of the miners who kept the two spacers separated were infuriating.  No matter that the _FALCON’s_ crew had risked its lives time and again to exchange hard cash for what these creatures ripped from Alyeska's reluctant grasp, strangers they remained, now accused of dark profiteering.

One-half of forty percent was Chewbacca's take of the _FALCON’s_ profit after the Captain pocketed his and ship's share.  One-half of half of seventy, definitely, maybe ninety this trip.

Chewbacca eyed the foggy shelter roof.  He had more important things to think about than money.  He should eat something, even the trash from that pathetic cache.  His thoughts always turned morbid when he was hungry; that dark spot of animal fear that could so cloud all the powers of a thinking being thrived in an empty stomach.

But what these humans called food would only fuel his temper, which was worse than his terror.  And if he lost his control, Chewbacca growled to himself, a quarter of half of ninety this trip would surely be a hundred percent dead.

The sabacc play continued.

 

Three hours they'd been at it this session.  The winnings on the table were thoroughly mixed: credits and jewels and more than one slip with scratching on it, noting gear and promises in exchange for cash.  Most of the valuable clutter lay in front of the Captain and Hran.  The prime challenger, the over-furred human Hrocks, was not so loud with his jibes now.

Spectators shifted positions with the new deal, blocking Chewbacca's view.  He rose, his head spinning momentarily in the stale air.  From his height, he could easily see the play.  The cards had come back to Calrissian yet again, along with a great many silver slices that noisily slid over the fiberboard tabletop.

That was not good.  The Captain knew better than to win so often.

Chewbacca elbowed his way through the miners, his bulk absorbing animosity and transforming any objections he heard into a pungent warning scent that even humans could smell.  A broad space cut open for him at tableside.  He hunkered down between the captain and the food guard.  His back was too close to a heater running too high for Wookiee comfort, but in this air, in this closeness of souls, he could use the goad of creeping pain to remain alert.

 _*play less skillfully*_ Chewbacca growled as he leaned his bow beside the captain’s box, out of the way of that heater.

The Captain, his skull fur gleaming black as space, damp and curling flat against his skull, shuffled two cards in his hand, indicating he understood.  Then he switched them back again.  Calrissian's best efforts, Chewbacca read the signs, were getting him nowhere.

He scratched his neck — he could hear the fur on his back crinkling in the heat and his skin itched as if hosting a fleet of fleas — to hide a long look at Hran.  Solo, and this was astounding to Chewbacca because sabacc was not Hran's game, had begun to beat Calrissian, winning three hands and more for the Captain's every two.

Chewbacca shifted on his haunches.  He settled his bandoleer more comfortably, more conveniently across his chest,  Amid his restlessness lurked a grumble of warning to Hran about over-enthusiasm.

The Captain, too, stretched in his seat, shrugging his shoulders to rearrange the way his tunic hung, a cautionary code long established among the crew.

But Hran was not paying attention.

Human complaints rose all around the makeshift card table when the pile of coins and gems tucked into Solo's pot and stayed.

Finally, even Calrissian threw down his cards.  "I fold, Pilot.  What I want to know," he added, "is who taught you to play and when?  I don't recall you getting that much downtime."

Hran grinned.  Chewbacca suppressed a laugh.  Hran often bared his teeth like a cub, all show, masking the danger of his abilities quite well.  This was not the occasion for such enthusiasm, but the Wookiee understood the day's provocations.

"Captain," Hran replied with more respect for that word than he usually applied, reminding Chewbacca that he knew other reasons for Solo to feel so rapacious, "I suspect there's whole systems in me that you have no idea about."

 

Two deals later.

Hran smoothed his mane back from his forehead with a cocky flourish.  "It's a matter of truth," he declared, wiping his wet hand on his jeans, "you're looking at a man who says the odds haven't been rolled that can get him down."

"Hot Rocks," the Captain murmured, "I think the kid needs his wings clipped."  Calrissian had taken the deck back from Solo, but with a pot small enough to dampen most player's complaints.

The sweaty sheen on Hran's cheeks gave his grin an odd glow.  "Hell, don't even tell me the odds," he chortled, "odds mean nothing to Han Solo."

PILOT, said Calrissian's smile, YOU'RE MAKING MY JOB HARDER.

* _Hran_ * rasped Chewbacca * _you are not listening Hran_ *

The air system overhead coughed in ragged agreement.

Hran tapped at the makeshift bandage on his upper left arm.  "Cap'n, I used up my bad luck today and from now on am skimming on gold."

"Pilot, old buddy, you're skimming on something I won't say what."

"Ah-ah, Captain.  A good gambler knows how to lose."

* _and rubbing his face in it will not help_ * the Wookiee snorted.

"And I say," came a mutter down the table, "there's too much damn talk going on here."

"There's too damn much winning on one side to my way of thinking," said another.

"You two," Abalardiani leaned forward into Lando's table space, "can just stop jawing — and you, tree-hugger, can quit that growling — before we all start listening harder to what's passing twixt you three."

Hran's eyes widened.  The Captain rapped the deck on the table, capturing safer attention from the two men.  "Rocks," Calrissian said with a cold smile for Hran and the miner, "in this crowd, does anyone still think we're crazy enough to cheat?"

If no one denied the accusation, no one reinforced it until the deal went around again and a miner quit the game.  The man stood.  He dropped his cards, one by one, in front of Solo.  "Crazy enough," he said over the colorful fall, "to make this hellhole three times a year and more.  Crazy enough to — yeah, sure it's possible."

Solo shoved his seat back.

The miner shrugged.  "It's possible.  That's all I'll say."

Chewbacca snarled — not at the miner but at Hran, whose indignation found no additional support in Calrissian's hard stare.

"Man's got a right to be touchy, Pilot," said the Captain; his fingers played a familiar crew tattoo, GOOD HAND HERE.   To the table he said, "Abalardiani, your bid?"

"Lando, the man's got no right to —"

"Han, I'm not cheating.  Are you?

"Hell no! What d'you —" Solo caught himself.  Finally reading Calrissian's intentions, the automatic disengage that was hardwired into the crew prevailed.  Hran pulled his box back in under him, sat hunched over his cards and shut up.  

Chewbacca hung his head and shook it in harmony with the effort to cool everyone's jets.

Still, something more than their immediate danger kept Chewbacca uneasy.  He couldn't find the distress point, but it was there, somewhere.  The Wookiee suppressed a shiver brought on by a rumble he heard outside.  More equipment bursting?  Could there be any left to destroy?  Or just another ice gale?  Who knew?  Chewbacca hunkered back on his heels and closed his eyes, once again hunting peace of mind.  The odds that anyone would survive to find out were all that mattered just now.

And those odds — never tell Hran — were lousy.

 

Chewbacca stepped out of the 'fresher late in the cycle the next day.  His lower back ached, but he could find no relief.  The food was dried protein and salty; the drink was seal-pack water by now and rationed.  And the 'fresher made all his instincts seize up.

He left the door open a moment in what he supposed was a vain attempt to ventilate the room.   His effort to de-snag and debug his snarled chest fur seemed just as futile.  Through the miasma of bad air and five remaining low-energy glows, he saw that something had happened at the gaming table.  Just then, he didn't care.  A few more bodies to toss out into the shrieking maw of the storm would be a few bodies less in the room.

Maybe then Alyeska's furious demiurge would be mollified.  Two men were found dead that morning — of what causes, Chewbacca hadn't asked — and the bodies given to the storm.  Clearly that had not been enough to meet the planet's demands.  

The sleep break Hrocks had called not long after the cheating face-off had done little good for anyone.  Who could restore themselves in such a cave?  The miners still hated the spacers, and the sabacc game had resumed.

Across the room, he heard, "Look, I'm broke and I'm out!" The Captain's voice was not rested.

Chewbacca rolled his head about in an effort to ease aching muscles,  He supposed he had better return to the play.  As he retrieved the distressed ammo strap that hung from a hook dripping dirty ice melt by the 'fresher door, he heard, "Back down, Trader," Hrocks' voice. "So are the rest of us.  Put in a note."

"There's nothing to pawn," the Captain said impatiently.  "We aren't playing together.  That whole pile belongs to Solo!  All I've got is the shirt on my back and that isn't worth a chippy after a cycle in this dungpit.  Whatever else you think I might have," he pointed at Hran who sat behind a tabletop of riches, "I have with my partner.  And odds are that it's already buried by avalanche."

Chewbacca started to hurry back to the table.  He could see the sudden surprise on Hran's face as he realized, apparently for the first time, that the freighter might be in danger.  Chewbacca woofed; sometimes Solo was a bit slow at recognizing what the _MILLENNIUM FALCON_ was able to withstand.

Calrissian continued, "Anything else I bid means we're playing against each other with our own goods.  I thought you didn't want that.”  He stood, started to turn away.  “Excuse me, but I'm due for rations.  Good luck, Hot Rocks, Pilot."

The miner did not buy Calrissian's line of disinterest.  Abalardiani was out of his seat, grabbing at the Captain's leg and when he hooked it, he pulled hard.

"Lando!" Hran yelled, but three miners were on him, pinning him to his chair.  "Chewie!"

Chewbacca slapped his hands to his chest; all he found was the wet bandoleer.  He roared, being just a long Wookiee stride away from the game, but in such close quarters, knocking over two or three men who fell across his way only meant that it was easy for two humming lazecarbines to ram his exposed flanks, for a third muzzle to find his jaw.

Held at bay, he still towered above the miners’ heads.  He could see the Captain’s thin dagger slice free of its sleeve, see it stab down at Abalardiani, but the man rolled, pulling Calrissian down on the dank floor.  In an instant all Chewbacca saw were the backs of minors, crowding all but the sound of fighting men.

And his crossbow?  He saw it still laying between Abalardiani’s and the Captain’s seats.  Where he left it.

* _careless_ * Chewbacca shouted his worry.  He flung out his arms and whirled about, but the unmistakable sound of over-charged powerpacks buzzed fiercely in his ears, and at his neck from behind.  A fourth double-barreled blaster stabbed hard at this face, enough to override even a Wookiee's darkened fury.

When Chewbacca could focus again, Hran was disarmed, his mouth bloody, and the crowd had widened to allow breathing room for five men who had Calrissian on his back, stretched out on the mats.

Kneeling, Hrocks sprawled across his prisoner, holding the Captain’s knife in a bleeding hand.  He leaned his full weight hard on the Captain and placed the fine blade close and high at Calrissian's neck.

"You," Abalardiani breathed heavily, "are playing.  You borrow from Hot Shot there and you play till we win back our fair share.  Understood?"

"Hot Rocks," the Captain said, impatience rumbling low in his voice, "if I play against Solo, we're still beating you blind.  I told you, we're partners."

The boss-man miner sat back, not minding if a knee or elbow landed hard on Calrissian.  Hrocks shifted his weight turning to the table top.  Chewbacca didn't like the eagerness  in the furred miner's eyes as he pushed himself up, grunting with pain.

"Lots of kinds of partners in this universe, Captain," Hrocks said, glancing at Hran,  "I know your kind."

Abalardiani pulled a folded labeling sheet from a shirt pocket, With the Captain’s knife, he pinned the film securely to the tablespace in front of the Captain's seat.  He grabbed a stylus. "Let'm at it, boys," he said, scoring the film with lines as the miners pulled Calrissian up and onto to his box at the table.

"An old mantor-style 1300, is it?"  Hrocks looked down the table when he heard Hran breath but not say what Hran clearly wanted to say.  The man grinned.  He slapped the stylus atop the table, and shoved it all in front of the Captain.  "Sign it."

"Against what I'd like to know."

"Against that ship, what else," Hrocks snorted.  "Or do you both own it and him call you Captain just to tickle your fancy?"

Now that, Chewbacca knew, was not funny.  There was far too much tension in this room already without adding the undercurrent that had so disturbed the _FALCON’s_ atmosphere these past quarters.  Hran Solo might own the freighter's wild soul, but Lando Calrissian held its legal status.

Hrocks had read that situation well enough.

The very portrait of astonished incredulity, Calrissian spread his hands beside the note and stared at the waiting film.  Chewbacca knew the pose for a con the Captain was especially good at, and yet he sensed an honesty in the maneuver that was alien to the play.  He looked over at Hran.  The expression he caught on Solo's face was equally amazed, and considerably deeper layered.

Opportunity, an avaricious gleam, lit in the shadows of Solo's eyes.  Chewbacca rumbled.  Hran glanced his way; the look vanished instantly.

Did the Captain see?  No.  Only wonder at the ridiculous situation they found themselves in showed clearly on either man's face now.  

"I'll need more sheets than this," Calrissian said, starting to slice the film into wide strips. "That freighter has been modified beyond all reason —"

"Ah ah, Trader," Hrocks clucked.  He reached over with an open hand for the knife.  

The Captain paused without looking up, then laid the knife flat on the table.   When the miner palmed the blade, Calrissian took up the stylus and one of his sliced strips.  He wrote down, _YT 1300 cargo bay 1 addition_ , marked his name, and flicked the chit down the tabletop as his ante.  Finishing his thought, he looked at Hran, at Chewbacca, at Abalardiani with a smile as confident as that on the lead miner's face.  "There's no telling," he advised, " how many pieces of equipment Pilot's added to the mass."

"What the hell —" The crowd sounded confused.

"Maybe they are partners, Rock," was offered.

Abalardiani held up a hand to quell the noise.  "How about that, Cap'n?"

"Oh, it's mine all right,” Calrissian wiped his forehead on his sleeve.  He rolled his shoulders as if stretching, his crew-code telling Hran, telling Chewie, that the Captain no longer discounted the idea of a fight.  He told Hrocks, "I'm just not arguing with you boys anymore.  A man's only got so much energy."

"But," a miner worried, "what about this piecemeal - _—_ "

"It's all right," Abalardiani declared. "It's okay.  There's partners and there's partners." Redoing the wrap of his right elbow bandage so he could cover his cut hand, he added, "Wind's still blowing, boys.  No reason at all not to take this slow.  Checky, get us more slips.  Golls, you and your boys let the Wook sit that side.  I'll keep this crossbow with me.  You, bully boy," he pointed at Solo, "pay the man his loan."

A moment passed as the Captain and Hran regarded each other. Chewbacca held his breath.  Humans could surprise a person, even years into the knowing of each other.

Hran seemed to shake off any thought of an argument.  "500 for the #1?" he offered.

Calrissian shrugged.  "Fine by me.  It's a good 75 heavy cargo trips old."

Hran sighed, his fingers shuffling the coins almost a moment too long.  "When I told you it needed replacing last quarter, you told me to shut up about good equipment.  Didn't I?  Chewie?  Didn't he?"

Perhaps his suspicions were just a reflection of the filthy place and of his hunger, but Chewbacca did not like this development in the game.  Told to sit on the cushions opposite Abalardiani, and between his Captain and Hran, he tried not to think about how different definitions of desire might come between friends.

At least the heaters didn't bother him anymore; the heaters weren't needed with all the sweat of the close bodies.   _*bet the climate control,*_ was his answer to Hran. _*lose a piece to each player so they can all hold hands and change into a room freshener*_  Only the two traders laughed.

"Shut up," Abalardiani ordered and pointed at Chewbacca.  "Especially you.  Calrissian, Solo, you play."

 

**Part Three—Han**

The deck was a mess.  Worse than the sharp ragged edges on the cards were the sticky spots.  Han ran a chipped fingernail between two green blades, swearing to himself.  Give him a good chess game any day, something he could see, could fly through and around and about, dazzling his opponent until Chewie squealed for mercy.  Cards were odds that every player with a decent memory could figure.  As for the privacy of strategy?  There wasn't any if you blinked or let a starburst slip while you tore a nail further trying to unglue the dirty things. Han's finger showed no red when the card cut through jagged skin, but the cuticle hurt like hell.

Not that a little blood would hurt these sorry game pieces.

He just didn't need the further distraction from a scam gone unbelievably weird.

Everyone was losing.  Lando, for godsake, was losing; and to him of all people!  Proof of what should have been impossible was laying in front of Han amid the glitter of gems, silver, and credits: a puzzle of chits that had taken shape of Captain Lando Calrissian's own _MILLENNIUM FALCON_.

Han played with the crudely cut sheets.  He considered his cards while repositioning film pieces to enhance the starship illusion.  Lando's hand script naming each freighter piece was strong and graceful and served well as hard-earned surface scars, familiar tracings of the _FALCON’s_ outer skin.

It was just a scrap fantasy.  The game was just a con, no harm in pretending.  Han glanced covetously at the chit waiting in the pot.  Lando was finally down to basics and had thrown in the main hatch ramp.

Han wanted that hatch ramp.  He chewed on his cut finger and played his cards, but his mind was far away from the shelter.  He could just see himself, standing on that ramp, watching cargo being loaded _—_

* _Hran?_ *

— counting the percentages as lade-droids happily rolled goods on, knowing that the cash on the line was his, all his —

* _Hran!_ *

Solo started.   _Damn_.  Miners were staring at him like he was some Rim bounty hunter.

* _your hand, Hran, you won_ *

 _What?  Oh.  Yeah._   _Playing on autopilot_ , he supposed, as with a quick glance around the table, he confirmed what the Wookiee claimed.  Han almost said that out loud, but the expression on Lando's face brought him up short.

The Captain was not happy.  Even if the rest of the players only saw patient weariness in the way Calrissian rubbed at his eyes;

Han knew better, knew the Captain was pissed.

Lando sat back and gestured at his lost wager like some telekinetic magician who could sweep the pot into Solo's lap.  The hand motion coded, PAY ATTENTION, WILL YOU, PLEASE?

Pissed he was, and at Han.

Nodding at those among the dirt-rats whose glares had turned to derisive laughter, Solo defended himself.  PLEASING THE MARKS, ALL RIGHT?

* _you're hot_ * Chewie rumbled with an irritated snarl that seconded Lando's demand. * _air-control's gone   a body can't think   I can't think   you’re not thinking_ *

Solo scowled to match the sass.  Lando's temper he could vaguely understand.  What was the Wook's problem?  Still, he drawled, "Hey, it's hot in here, all right?" acquiescing to his partners' suggestions.  "A mind tends to wander, okay?"

Hot it was, sure.  Han gathered the cards, shuffled and dealt.  A man could taste the effluence of the 'fresher even if his nose had ceased to smell it.  Good for Lando if the Captain could keep his mind on gaming in the middle of this pit.  Han preferred the distraction of the _FALCON’s_ avatar, laying there so ragged and soiled and growing more complete with each play.  Part of his brain was on permanent vacation, soaring with a beautiful bird, rebuilt and refit to fulfill any decent pilot's dream of star flight.  So what?

Han fanned the cards in his hand.   _Any decent pilot — which Calrissian is not — would feel the same_ , he declared to himself.

Preoccupation served him well for once.  Just part of this hand could blow every player here off the table, but Han did not smile; no, he did not give himself away.

"Cards, people?" Solo calmly asked.  "Who wants cards?"

"Gimme three."

"Four here."

_Heat, smells, hunger and bad neighbors, he knew, made for dangerous distractions._

"Five," muttered Abalardiani.

"That bad, Hot Rocks?"

"Yeah, and shut up about it."

_Far better were daydreams of out-running every damn customs ship from here and out through the Rim._

"What'd you say, Cap'n? Two?"

_Maybe Lando will bid the security package attached to the hatchway next._

"Yes, Han, I said two."

_No one had broken yet the system he installed last year over Calrissian's objections._

"Han?"

"Right, sorry."  Han quickly dealt the cards and avoided Lando's finger-tapped pique over such wandering.  "Two it is."

But if Lando would just bid that lockup, Han thought dreamily, he could make sure no one would even try.

 

Play continued.  The faces changed at the table as everyone caught some shut-eye, squabbled over food, then came back to be part of the entertainment.  Any other time, Han would have expected his body to have slowly stopped aching; what was it, two days?  More?  He'd lost track.  Long enough for them to be chewing dehydrated starch cubes and not looking too closely at the condition of the last working filter on the water system.

He'd actually slept maybe four, five hours each of those two days; Lando the same, although he looked better for it.  Always did, the fastidious so-and-so. Chewie could sleep upright, looking like a tree trunk; Han never worried about Chewie needing extra hours laying flat on his back.

In all that time, they'd had no chance to compare strategies; miners stepped into any proximity that developed between the _FALCON’s_ crew.  A hissed, "Don't fight them," was all Lando managed when the last hot food had been shared.

Big help that was.  As if Han were going to be impolite when some fool sat fiddling with Han's own blaster just out of arm's reach.

And Chewie was beginning to buzz as much as that warping entry shield he kept complaining about.  "Will you go take a walk?!" Solo grumbled when he felt one too many hairy pokes at his back.

"Yeah," came an echo, "how many times we gotta tell you to quit telling him what to do?"

"He is not telling me what to do!" Han jabbed a finger in the entry's direction.  "He's crazy that the shield's gonna blow and we're gonna be buried alive."

"Cheery fella, ain't he?"

"The entry's holding," Abalardiani said over the complaint.  "Now will you people bet or do I throw you outta the game?  Not you, Solo.  Stay put."

"Why?" Han challenged.  "Maybe I'm just sick of all this nonsense."

"Tell'm, Captain," Hot Rocks leaned toward Lando.  "Tell'm a man can't break planet with only half a ship to his name."

Han graced the lead miner with his accusatory finger next.  "For your information, buddy, the only reason I'm still playing is because you have those lazes and my blaster targeting my skull.  This little game was your brilliant idea, not mine."

Lando allowed a flicker of irritation to light his eyes; Abalardiani didn't, couldn't, see it.  After sprawling the word "galley" across a scrap of film, Calrissian slid it into the pot.  He picked up his card, his finger-words insisting, PLAY IT COOL, PILOT _._

 _Oh right, sure._ Still, Han swallowed his reaction to such an inane order.  He shrugged off Chewie as well.  All right, he'd relax.  Just below the hand he studied lay _his _FALCON__ , and he'd just re-inventory each piece of _his_ freighter, each pinion and claw of his beautiful bird of prey.   _His,_ understood?

The count soothed his temper.  A few moments more and he would be able to look again at Abalardiani without giving into the temptation to play hard, real hard; he would be able to smile back at Lando without impertinence.

All that mattered, Han told himself, was the ship he had in hand, if only for a dream's worth of time.  When they got free of this pit, when they were space-bound again, his claim would melt away like bad spice.  Lando would moan over lost profits, Chewie would complain of lice for weeks, and Han would be back to sitting pilot, just pilot, same as always, nothing different, everything the same boring...

 _Easy, sure,_ Han thought sourly, despite his intentions.  He shoved a handful of gems across the board into the kitty.

"Be a sport, Solo," said Hot Rocks, "bet back some of those ship chits."

"Shut up," Han quoted back, "Just shut up, Abalardiani, and bet your own damn flying property."

 

Luck stayed with Han, so he kept playing as he dreamed and puzzled over the game and the Captain's behavior.

 _So, Lando’s losing as part of a con._   _So, okay._  Han dealt and agreed that giving the miners a show of misery contributed to the continued good health of the _FALCON_  crew.   _On the other hand_ — Han made a face as he considered his cards — _if Calrissian’s losing simply to keep me from getting pissed_ — no, Han was not going to rise to the call of that irritating and ubiquitous complaint.

Much.

 _Lando simply doesn’t really have a taste_ — Han discarded — _for_ _mixing it up with the bastards of the universe._   

Not that Calrissian hesitated to use Han's preference for such action when necessary.

 _Matter of fact_ — Han dealt new cards to the players without losing a thought — _it would be nice if for once His Daintiness didn't ride a man so hard when he’s just testing the air for trouble._   

_Like when we’re were in a situation like this game, huh?_

A jug with a siphon came around the table.  Han sipped his share of what passed for water.  He would have spit out the taste but for the three men sitting next in line, staring longingly at the jug.  They'd slit his throat before Chewie ever noticed.

Ugly place, ugly people.

 _How does Lando stay so calm?_  Maybe losing on purpose, not getting involved with the play, was Calrissian's way to maintain distance from the dreck they sat in.  A scam, yeah, a private one, like Han's bewitching fantasy of the _FALCON, his FALCON, such a pretty, pretty bird —_

"Make it a quint on leverage."

_What a gas it would be, flying away with a ship's belly full of all these bloody gems.  Wouldn't the ranks at old Katana's joint kick the walls in frustration?_

"Hey kid, I said it's a leverage quint."

_Gods, he could just see the look on —_

"What's the matter?  You counting this kitty already?"

_— the old Maz face now._

"Hey,"  Fingers snapped in Han’s face.  "I'm talking to you, buddy!"

Han blinked.

The miner — Checky, it had to be trip-trigger Checky — jerked his palm back sharply.  "Aw, someone knock the bastard upside the head."

"I hear you," Han snapped, not liking the applause for Checky’s suggestion.  What round was it?  Had he dealt?  Of course, he had dealt.   _What did that dirt-eater say?  A quint?  No.  Yes.  Right!_

"A leverage quint," Han repeated.  "Okay.  Fine."

_I'm on top of things, hole-hugger.  And just to show you just how on top of things I am..._

“And sorry to say,” Han smiled, “hand’s over. I am laying out a row."

"Fanx!" Checky swore.  "What you up to, kid?"

It was a chancy move, an arrogant play, but Han needed the kick to stay away from _FALCON_ fantasy flights.  He gave Lando a cocky smile to emphasize his alertness and the self-determination.  If Lando didn't believe it, well, Han hadn't yet convinced himself of the reality of Calrissian's ease either.

"Let's see those cards," Checky insisted.  

"Six suits, all auras, starburst high."

"Damn your eyes!  Where'd you pull that starburst from?"

Han jumped to his feet.  "I'm getting tired of your flap, buddy!"

Checly was on his toes, chin jutting up to match Solo’s height. " _You're_ getting tired!?"

"Shut up _—_ "

"Both of you!"

Abalardiani and Calrissian yelled together and, behind his order, Hot Rocks had carbines that he was as willing to order swung on Checky as on Han.

The belligerent miner had kicked his box back from the table, but found it and sat down again, settling for a scowl and crossed arms.

With a truly filthy sneer — _Gods,_ _what a show —_ Han slowly sat back down himself.

WILL YOU BEHAVE YOURSELF? No one missed Calrissian’s exasperation.

Han heard a laugh and ignored it.  He rolled his eyes.  So, he was short-tempered.  He was also hungry and thirsty and he could still feel the pain that had stabbed his shoulder when he slapped the table.  Han pulled his winnings into his pile, gathered up the cards yet one more time and shuffled.  So he was a bit preoccupied with the _FALCON_ ; so damn frigging what?

Lando laced his fingers and stretched. FLY CASUAL _,_ he insisted.

 _Fly casual_.   That favorite, indefinable phrase.    _Sure, Captain.  With three laze carbines aimed at us and a half-brained miner swinging my blaster around like it was a sling-shot.  Well, I'm flying just about as casual as I can, Captain, and I'll take that cooling system array you just wagered as casually as any man is able._

"So," Han said out loud, tapping at the cards he had spread out on the table.  "Who's staying with me now?"

 

How many games later?  Two?  Three?

The play went on because Abalardiani insisted, and because the distraction helped everyone trying to ignore the winds rocking the shelter roof.

Lando hadn't signaled a word to Han since the business with Checky; he hadn't even managed a response for Chewie who had wandered off into a noisy pace around the room, his hoots and growls marking every fault he found with a disintegrating shelter.  Han didn't like Calrissian's silence; could be the Captain was seriously angry _with_ Solo which was a situation a whole universe different than the trouble with these dirt-eating miners.

"Who dealt this?" snarled a player.

"Who do you think?" came the answer.

"I'm out."

Lando joined the retreat.  "Looks like I am, too."

Abalardiani studied Calrissian.  "Getting tired of the game, Captain?"

"You want to play this hand —"  Lando held his cards out for the miner, for Chewie, to see.  "Go right ahead."

Hot Rocks' laughter was unkind.

* _about as solid as the struts_ * the Wookiee growled.

Lando sat back, crossed his arms, and stared at Han who shrugged and didn't return the look when the chit Lando had lost as ante joined Solo's winning at the end of the very short play.

_If Lando’s letting the game get personal —_

Solo worried the situation through the next hand.  He won it, of course, and added the auxiliary bridge to his _FALCON_ array.  A ship could fly without an auxiliary bridge, but not very happily.  That could be Lando's problem, of course; he could be as distracted by the piece-meal destruction of the ship as easily as Han was elated by its reconstruction.  But that would mean Lando was taking the whole thing to heart.

_— naw, not a pro like Lando._

Hell, if the Calrissian thought Han intended to fly off in the _FALCON_ , he would ram that ship straight up — Lando didn't like fighting, he avoided fighting whenever possible, but that didn't mean Lando couldn't fight and fight damn good.

"Three pair, all blades, all major," Abalardiani announced a spectacular hand.  

He leaned toward Lando, nudged the rolled-up sleeve of Calrissian's tunic.  "Don’t get discouraged, Captain," he said.  "Maybe Lady Luck is rethinking her options.  I start winning again, then maybe you start winning again, and the game comes back to me and you battling for that ship of yours.”

Hot Rocks cocked a shoulder in Han’s direction.  “At least I don't pack a blaster to make sure of my winnings."

_That does it!  The sonuvhismother's reading minds!_

"You buddy,"  Solo shouted, upsetting his stash and chits as he reached for Abalardiani, "are —"

"Are going to drop it!"  Lando's voice was lower than most folk noticed, and when Calrissian used it in loud, deadly earnest, thunder rolled back any objections.

Miners jumped; from across the room, a Wookiee roar died in amazement.

Han froze on his feet, but just barely.

"Lay off!" Calrissian continued, reducing the volume, if not the bass tremors under his words.

Han glared at the dark hand that pointed him out and directed him to sit.  Behind him, a muzzle jabbed under his vest, cold against the bare skin of his lower back.  He snorted.  He could have that blaster away from the kid so fast, Abalardiani would never know what killed him.

As for his captain _—_ “Layoff _?”_  One hand still flat on the table, Han jabbed his other thumb to his chest.  THAT'S ME AND MY REP HE'S PUTTING DOWN _,_ said his own mime.

And if the miners caught that message, so much better.

Something thoughtful blinked in Lando's eyes.  It disappeared into a studied smile, a formal disengagement of hostilities that changed nothing as far as Han was concerned.  Games, he was sick and tired of games.

Lando started to get up himself.

"Fight?" some fool hoped.

"Not thinking of quitting, are you, Captain?" Hot Rocks inquired.

"Do you mind," Calrissian managed to ask quietly, "If I need a very short break?"

Abalardiani gestured.  The miners with the carbine behind Lando stepped back to give him room.  "Make it real short," said Hot Rocks.

"Oh, I will.  And do you think you can avoid turning a trick or two with him while I'm gone?"

Han didn't hide his frown.  Okay, he'd risen to Abalardiani's bait.  He was not in the best frame of mind on such matters, thank you.  He didn't like being talked about either.  To stay a player, Han sneered, "Now we gotta ask to use that swamp?"

Abalardiani ignored him.  He laughed, "Oh, I'll be good.  You just hurry back."

 _*he's the swamp-thing*_ Chewie offered long distance.

 _No, he's_ — Something implied in Lando's carefully schooled expression nagged at Han.

 _Reputation_.  

Something important about Lando and Abalardiani and — Han ignored the snickers around him as he slowly sat.  Something about gaming and the Captain's face when Han protested his reputation began to coalesce for Solo.

Maybe — maybe Lando didn’t like that Abalardiani seemed to have proven that Han's carefully nurtured act as a jerk who'd go for whatever he could was actually true.

No — Hot Rocks might think so, but Lando himself orchestrated that act; he knew Han would never throw him over.  An unreal threat would never prompt such irritation as Calrissian had shown.  Han couldn’t remember the last time he had heard Lando let loose such a bellow.

Not at him, at least.

Abalardiani had to be the target.  Han idly fingered his stash of jewels and notes.  He watched the lead miner chat up his support.  Hot Rocks was the man to whom Lando kept closest attention, and, in return, Abalardiani was never far from Calrissian's elbow.  Maybe Abalardiani had finally gotten to Lando.  

 _Reputation.  Integrity_.  The words nagged at Han.  What the hell did someone like Abalardiani care about strangers he'd never see —

_Paridiso._

Abalardiani played the tables at Paridiso.  That news had certainly caught Lando’s ear, his interest in this damn card game.  Lando's professional reputation might depend on his honoring the Game.

 _As sure as this place is a bog, boy, you know that_ _Lando can’t lose, not in front of witnesses, not if he wants to keep the _FALCON_ __and_ _his reputation._

The other miners saw the game as a chance to make traders drop their wad in the same unequal way the miners did any time a trader made Alyeska.  Abalardiani knew better.  Abalardiani knew damn well what gossip would fly on every gambling world from here to Coruscant, let alone on Paridiso, if the story were spread that Lando Calrissian had lost a purse then iced the deal and took it back the hard way.

Lando reappeared from the murk of the 'fresher.  Han watched the man, understanding that Calrissian was truly threatened.  All Lando had was an intangible skill and a reputation.  Han knew that much about the man; knew much the same about himself.  But Han could fly any ship he needed to; and, he had Chewie.

"Your deal, Pilot."

Automatically, Han picked up the cards, shuffled, dealt and continued the play.

 _Blast it, why did Lando agree to this mucking game?!  He must have seen Abalardiani's angle.  Of course he had; but if he had,_ _why wasn't Calrissian playing decently, dammit?_

"I'm in for five crystofaz," the bidding started.

 _So maybe_ , crooned an old argument in Han's mind, _just maybe he doesn't care._

"Raise you two."

_Sure he does._

"You next, pilot."

_Bird's just a crate that flies to him._

"Hey, you with the goodies!"

_Admit it.  Lando's got about as much pilot's soul as —_

"Han.." Lando growled.

_Yeah, yeah._

"There's a 2K pack bid  waiting on you," Abalardiani tapped his stash, "just in case you're still in this game, bully boy."

Han gave Hot Rocks a sour look.  Lando ought to just let him kill this sonova —

"I'm thinking, do you mind?" Solo growled back as he fiddled with the radar dish chit, nudging it a little higher, a little closer to — _Yeah, there,_ _an arm's reach down from the upper hatch cover._

Thinking that, _No, Lando_ _doesn't appreciate the FALCON as much as he ought_.

Thinking that, _Lando’s pilot certainly does._

 

The revival of competition was short-lived.  Soon, just three players were left: Calrissian and Han, still sitting opposite each other, with Abalardiani, still sitting in the middle distance between them.  The remaining miners shoved away the boxes and packs that had served as chairs and crowded the table, intent witnesses to the end.

"Inner spread locked."  Han fanned his cards on the stained cardboard in front of him.  He shut his eyes to wait out the response to his call.  Fatigue shimmered through Han; every bruise inside and out was all too clearly defined.  Rubbing his blurry vision back into service, Solo leaned his elbow on the table and carefully rested his cheek on his palm.  "Come on, Hot Rocks," he murmured into his fingers.  "We haven't got all day."

The joke went unappreciated.  Abalardiani tossed his cards on the table.  "I'm out," he said.  "Busted.  Captain, how about you?"

With deliberate care, Lando laid out his losing cards, four-spread, one pair, on the table.  He leaned back, stretching slightly, ready —

 _Gods,_ Han read the sign. _Now_ _Lando's looking_ _for trouble_.

Calrissian said,  "Pilot, I'm tired.  Game's over."

"Says who?"

"Hot Rocks!" Han exclaimed before Lando could do something stupid.  "All that's left are the bones.  You can't expect a man to bet engine banks, navicomp or a core computer.  A shell's not a ship.  He's lost; I've won.  Okay? Right.  It's over."

"I thought," Abalardiani's voice was not pretty at all, "that a ship was exactly what you two were playing for."

"Oh, for _—_ " Calrissian grabbed a blank scrap of film, a stylus, and wrote.  "Here.  This is for the rest of it.  One hand take all."

"Lando!" Han sputtered.

"What's wrong with that?" Calrissian wanted to know.

"You can't!" Han objected.

"For all the stars in —" Lando looked away.  He took a deep breath, then returned his attention to the table.  "Han, Hot Rocks," he rumbled, "we are down to the last water and food.  We're practically drawing lots.  I, for one —" The patience in Lando's words vanished.  He threw his stylus across the table.  "I am not sitting around playing while chewing on some damned soul's bones!"

_But that's not the point, Lando!  If I win the whole ship, he'll make us honor the game out there.  What are we going to do then, huh?  Think, Lando!_

"Weather's lighting." Han insisted, "We might not have to play _—_ "

Again, Lando looked away, looked away and down, a terrible indication of Calrissian's disintegrating control.  "Han," he managed to say without raising his voice again, "what the hell is bothering you?"

 _Me?_  Han's gut stirred uneasily.   _You haven't guessed what Abalardiani was up to?_  

 _Dammit!_  Whenever he and Lando got at cross-purposes in the middle of a job, all hell broke loose.  Han didn't like counting odds; he depended on Calrissian to pay attention to such matters.  Was Lando pushed to the point no longer cared to consider their chance for survival?

"What the hell do you think this is, Captain?" Abalardiani said suddenly.  "A joke?"

"A joke." Lando laughed.  And when he looked up, Han knew that his Captain had most likely forgotten what flying casual meant himself.

"Yeah, as a matter of fact, I do," Calrissian said, "and I think —" Lando stood.  Lando smacked the carbine he found pointed at him out of his way. "that it's gone on long enough.  You've had your fun, Abalardiani.  Look around you!  This place is fixing to be a sucker's grave!  Chewie!  How much longer do you think we've got?"

Chewie told them, Chewie howled them a horror story.  Han, too busy with his futile efforts to understand Lando's angle, didn't care.

"Well, boys," Abalardiani said slowly, ignoring the anxiety in the Wookiee's voice, "The man was lying."

"Lying?!"

"Captain!" Han shouted at a man itching for action, not seeing the miners who suddenly surrounded him, "Let it be!"

Lando stood still, but his eyes were hard, too hard, on Abalardiani.

The man with the bandaged arms and the thin smile leaned to his left.  "You know what I mean, Pilot, don't you?"

"Not what _you_ mean, bastard."

Chewie barked a choice expletive in Kazeel.  Chewie was nearby again; Chewie understood.

"Nice try," Hot Rocks smiled, "but we end the game now and the captain thinks you'll give it all back to him.  Most of the men here think the same.  And we don't much care for that idea, do we boys?  Nope, didn't think so.  Matter of fact, _Captain_ , I don't think you like it either.  Come on, bully boy," Abalardiani purred, "tell the man how happy you are to win his ship fair and square and for every living soul from here to hell to know."

Han flushed, he knew he did; only the heat that already steamed everybody's face hid how well he understood.  The miners would have been satisfied with a good show of conflict; Hot Rocks had heartier tastes and Han had catered to every one of them.

 _Lando, he's talking nonsense_ , Solo wanted to shout, _You know he is!_

"Damn you," he said out loud, "I don't _—_ "

"Now don't you get wild on us, Pilot."  Abalardiani spread his arms to include everyone and every weapon in the room.  "None of us here blames a man for looking out for himself.  Fact is, we prefer men who do their work alone, don't we?  Yeah.  Keeps him up-front and less inclined to _—_ "

"Keeps a man honest," Checky told Han.

"See what I mean?" Abalardiani gathered the playing cards and began to shuffle.  "'Course, traders have been inclined to cheat since the beginning.  Shouldn't single you three out too much."

"Get to the point," Lando said.

"Thought I had," said Abalardiani.  He leaned back, glanced from Lando to Han then back again and held out the deck for Calrissian to rejoin the game.  "Point is, if that is your ship, no lie, then I suggest you start playing like you want to keep it."

 _Lando, I don't need your ship._   _I've got my own money, I told you.  You know I do._

"One professional to another," Abalardiani added.

A flicker of disbelief — just a flash, Ham might have imagined it — crossed Lando's face.  Then he looked at Han, at the miner, back again at Solo, his face shark blank.

"Gods," Abalardiani chuckled, "This story is going to buy a week of drinks next time I hit the tables."

How close Hot Rocks sat to death must have occurred to the miner.  He snapped his fingers.  "Gols, the Wookiee!"

Quickly the laze-carbines reasserted themselves and Han's blaster readjusted its aim.

"I think," Abalardiani said, "it's time you two started playing again." He flipped the edge of Lando's last bid with a fingernail.  "This chit still good, Captain, or have you reconsidered?"

Lando sat back down.

There were calls to settle the matter in a more final manner, but Abalardiani held off the miners.  "Boys, give the man a little slack; easiest body to con is a conman, especially by one of his own."

"Lando," Han insisted, "you can't believe I'd — you know I —"

"You what?" demanded Checky, shoving his face close to Han's.  "You planning to go back on your winnings for buddy-boy here anyway?"

"Enough of that!" Lando's deep voice stalled Solo and Checky a second time.  "The center engine banks," Calrissian said, his gaze steady on Han, his reactions to what had happened hidden behind the black shutters that were his eyes.  He wrote out the new bet and placed it in the middle of the table, his manner slick and cold, a professional.  "Your deal, Pilot."

 

In two quiet, quick and able hands Lando won back the bones of his ship.

Comments about past collusion simmered.  Han knew that all Lando did differently now was play with the refigured odds of a game he had realized he did not play with a friend.

_Come on, Lando, I was just day-dreaming._

"Triple pairs," Han attempted a grin to break through a chill beyond the ice and storm.

Calrissian's expression remained as shiny as chrome.  He gathered his cards and laid them in front of Han.  "Full array," he reported.

Lando won two more hands.

Han won the next six.

The navicomp was his again, the core computers as well; just the starskin shell of the _FALCON_ lay on a wagered scrap of paper under a dying light.

Chewie stood behind Lando, staring at the darkness above them, keening a warning _*the walls are shrieking! listen!*_  that nobody heard.  The miners were a ribbon of murmuring shadows, all eyes on the cards as the colors slid across the board.

Han noticed all of them and none, fully conscious only of the man who was a dark wormhole across his attention, sweat glittering across the brow and cheeks of a face otherwise undefined in the dim light.

"Call." Calrissian's voice was the last soft velvet left in the grimy shelter.

Han spread his cards up and wide for everyone to see.

Full links across a starburst suit, leveraged.

For a second, there was silence from the men; only the room and the Wookiee continued to rumble and groan.

Calrissian folded his cards and carefully placed them face down on the board.

They stared at each other, Han and Lando.

Abalardiani swept up the last _FALCON_ chit.

"Hey!"

Hot Rocks ignored Han.  He clipped the wager to a film from which dangled all the chits played up till now.

"What is that for?" Lando said quietly.

Abalardiani flashed the fluttering film in front of Lando.  "What do you think?"  He held it up for general viewing, then passed the mess over his shoulder to Checky.  "Everybody sign," he announced, grimacing at the elbow pain the flourish had caused.

* _foolishness_ *  Chewie wailed

A low rumble quavered through the room.  Just the Wookiee making more racket, someone said.  Han knew the difference but, watching the movement of that disastrous film through the ranks, said nothing.

"Bets between friends," Abalardiani explained as he scribbled his name across the note when it returned, "tend to vanish.  Thirty some witnesses —" he gestured to embrace every miner present and still standing "— are harder to ignore." He held out a stylus for Lando.

Far more crumpled than when it started, the collection of chits lay atop the pile of over-played cards, waiting for Calrissian.

Who said, "No."

Abalardiani slapped one hand on top of the tattered note.  "You'll take it and you'll sign it!"  He snapped fingers at the boy with Han's blaster.  A handspan below Han's skull, the lazepack sputtered to life.  Solo didn't bother to consider the black barrel cold on his neck; he knew its bore.

"He wins it or he dies," Hot Rocks told Calrissian.

Above them, the light began to flicker.  Lando noticed the threat, then softly asked, "Why?"

"Let's just say," Hot Rocks chuckled, "I enjoy complications."

Han couldn't breathe.   _Kill a friend, save a ship,_  was Abalardiani's little complication and he could freeze in hell for it.  Han searched for a sign of what would come next, but Calrissian was a wraith, too sheer to read, only his pale palms defined by the light.

Somewhere beyond Han's tight focus, he could hear Chewie's voice join the shelter's groans in harmony.  Han almost laughed out loud.

_Sign it, Lando!  What difference does any of this make when we're all dead anyway?_

He didn't laugh; he did not want Lando to die thinking Han meant to betray him.  Fat chance.

"Rocks," someone complained.  "Ain't time for this.

"Shut up, Max."

"But lookit the shield!"

"I said, shut up!" Abalardiani leaned closer to Calrissian.  "Well, Captain?"

Calrissian straightened; he shoved his box back, its edges rasping against the floorboards in tune to the straining shelter.  As he stood, Lando's left hand smoothed a nonexistent cloth on thetable.

GO FOR BROKE, Calrissian's hand gestures echoed Han’s fears, WE'RE ALL DEAD ANYWAY.

"I know!"  Han shouted.  "Lando, I _—_ "

"Sign it!" Abalardiani demanded over Solo's voice, "Or we'll —"

 _WOOWWWOWOWOWO,_ the far wall warbled.  The 'fresher door slammed shut with the power of implosion.  Chewie howled.

Over the noise of the shelter and panicking miners, Calrissian called Abalardiani's bluff.  "Or you'll what?  Kill me?"

"Traeget!" Abalardiani ordered. "Golls!"

The man behind Han grabbed his arms, pulling hard.  The kid with the blaster rammed the humming laze barrel into Han's ear.

" "Wookiee ain't going anywhere, Rocks!"

Han stifled a groan.  What was it with that damn fear-glazed Wookiee?  Since when did a couple of lazeguns in his gut slow him down?

Abalardiani poked at Lando's chest.  "You sign," he told Calrissian, "and maybe you'll all have a chance to get outta here."

Abalardiani knew a way out, he had to.  He understood that walls could be dodged and that snow could be dug out of; the last rush of a short-range lazed brain, however, was something not even hotshot Han Solo could outrun.

Still, Han had always lived by the promise of hope.

_Lando?  Come on!_

The entrance shield crackled wildly.  Miners jumped and some started shouting.  Amid the noise the noise, Calrissian studied his pilot.

_Lando?_

"The west wall's SPLIT"  Someone yelled.

Calrissian started at that.  He looked hard at Abalardiani, then snatched the stylus out of Hot Rock's hand.  "You've been called, buddy," he said abruptly.  He blew away the trash filtering down from the ceiling and signed.  "A bet between friends," he added, glancing up at Han.  "won fair and square."

He didn't smile when he said it.  He didn't have time.

The light blew out.  The wall behind Han exploded.

The shelter died.

 

 **Part Four—Captain of the** _**MILLENNIUM FALCON**_

How many bodies?

Sensors tracked the life in the buried shelter, but Squad Leader was not inclined to trust mechanicals this time.  Lingering shudders of the landing still whispered through the troops — through himself — although the shuttle was down and the mission underway and the fierce jaws of the storm broken wide open to a blinding blue sky.  Danger past was danger out of mind professionally, but there were still shudders, minute hesitations, the careful looking over one's shoulder for the last, ever unseen blast.

All around the rescuers lay evidence of what happened to plasticine and steel safety when natural forces held sway.

The hurricane ride down and shuddering landing belied the touted design of shuttles even such as the _ISS GRAVIN_ commanded.  A full timepart the ship sat shivering, the crew waiting and listening and wondering as the sensors continued to make no good sense of the gusts that had blown the black clouds and icy whirlwinds away.  Which meant that Squad Leader relied on what his living senses told him and let the lingering tremors among his people pass without comment.

Eventually he heard, _Hallo the shelter!_  called down the through the preliminary bore made in the ragged ice.   _Light and life above!  Give us life below!_

The traditional prayer for rescuers, carried across space by aid squads for millennia, was the probe that counted.  The work was dirty and dangerous and depressing all too often.  The young Lead lived for the moment when blips on a meter became a living response, however faint, however pain-ridden.

"'Lo above!  For pity's sake, hurry!"

It was a foul nest they opened to the sun — by the smell, some sort of flux had incubated _—_ though not so rank had the heating still been active.  Twenty-seven humans, one Wookiee, crawled or were lifted out of the hole, all bedazzled by the light and suffering from injuries, frostbite, dehydration, and bad air.  Of those with the strength to emerge on their own, only one stubborn, broken armed man and the Wookiee walked the distance to medical.

Measuring the storm as a double-helix tempest, none would have questioned finding no one alive.  Squad Leader looked around himself again, his eye shield set on high, and marveled at the raw beauty of ice-encrusted violence.  If not blown away by ice and wind, the artificial structures were mowed down and collapsed into themselves by avalanche.  A single retaining wall had held and the Lead easily understood the astonishment of the spacer who had awakened in the medical kiosk to learn that his ship was drifted against but not crushed.

Not that he had been awake for long.  Medic had seen to that.  Another timepart more and the lingering winds would subside, assuming the weather sensors could be trusted, and that was soon enough for bodies to be swaying in their hammocks, testing the strength of the quonhut's lead-lines stapled to the frozen ground.

" _FALCON_?" the man had managed to ask.  "Freighter. In the bay."

"Socorran?" countered the medic and the man nodded, probably too dazed to consider to whom he provided that information.  Socorra and its exiles had no great reputation at Core and this son of his motherland was old enough to know why.

He paid for his honesty by receiving an accurate dose that would keep him asleep until needed.  Still, he was conscious long enough to nod for Squad Leader, who asked, "CEC Mantor YT-1300?"

"Yes, yes.  Is it—"

"Intact.  Snowed under, but -—"

But he was not awake to hear more than that first, heartening, confirmation.

Squad Leader ducked through the double entry of the quonshut on his second round of the site.  "Feed in from Comm yet?" he asked the nearest medaide.  No, the cruiser was still darkside and the upper atmosphere still brilliant with borealis.

The Lead nodded.  He stood at the check-in point and shuffled through a mess of manual IDs common to itinerant workers.  He supposed most of it was forged, or contained false information, even the mining licenses.  Nobody in a right mind came to planets like Alyeska if a legitimate home or work waited elsewhere.

For a second time, he examined the bettor's chit collected from the miner who had walked out on his own, the one in double slings, the man with one of the taller tales Squad leader had heard on the Rim.  Still, here was a dirty sheet of film, with flutters of ante chits embossed to the edges and thirty signatures witnessing the exchange of ownership, piece by piece, of that old and ugly CEC freighter.

Thirty.  Take away the Socorran, the second spacer, the Wookiee, from the survivors and that made five human dead since game's end.  Squad Leader took a moment with his handcomp to tag a file with a reminder to check injury patterns against time of death.

Now, why would anyone wager his ship?  Curiosity brought the lead back to the chit.  Or, be so concerned about it once lost to another man?  Calrissian was Socorran and _Han Solo_ sounded Corellian, same as the second spacer seemed by his looks.  No possibility of mistaking one for the other and the chit clearly listed Calrissian as the man on the short end of this gamble.

Probably meant nothing more than what beings did when out of their minds with fright.   _If it were real,_  the Lead paused, wary once more.  If it were real, it meant a mess of trouble when the sleep drugs wore off.

Best leave it for the Lieutenant to manage.

*

 _Damn mush-for-brains Corellian!  Play at running off with my ship will you?_  

Someone stood over Lando, but more intrusive in his slowly waking awareness was the steady snoring he knew too well.  

_Thick-skulled joy-riding star jockey!  You think that fast-draw blaster can beat my blade — I know you do, you power-junkie! — My blade doesn't need recharging, Hotshot.  My blade springs faster than any quick-draw you've ever imagined!_

"Eyes open, Trader; this is your unlucky day."

_By the gods, I'll teach you what a man prays he never has the misfortune to know— you think you've got secrets!  Just you wait till I let you in on what a son of my Maman's House learns at the knees of his security, you poor excuse for a piece of sentience!_

"Now!."  

A hard whack to the stays of the hammock jolted Lando awake.  Han?  He swayed to the side and saw Solo in abed this side of a lingering odor of unwashed Wookiee who he didn’t see.

"Chewie?"  Lando swayed to the left.  "Where's the Wookiee?" he demanded of a mess of Imperials.

 _Oh.  Imperials.  And Abalardiani.  Damn._  Lando's dreaming violence echoed in his wakefulness at the sight of the miner.   _Come what and whenever,_ _friend. we'll meet again._

_Promise._

Before the Pacer could answer, black and silver rank stepped into Lando's view.  "You've worries bigger than a Wookiee, Calrissian," said a vaguely familiar voice.

"It's at the bay," inserted the younger man, "with the freighter."

 _Right._  Lando remembered someone telling him the _FALCON_ was secure.   _Chewie’s with it.  Good._

"There will be a few formalities," continued black and silver as he waved a messy flag of film notes in Lando's face, "before we release the ship, you understand."

Lando focused on the officer.  He was pretty good on voices; better on faces.  He'd played against this piece of Imperiousness, he was sure.

The study entertained the man greatly.  "Klinen Helszer," the officer said through a wide smile.

"Festival Four, Gerbsheine," Lando acknowledged.

Had been an honest game, that one so far away, if only another round with too-high stakes, played against a man with connections beyond a saloon's chancy table.

That time, Lando had won while in the company of friends who had far outnumbered the Imperials.  Not that Helszer had made a fuss; no, Lando remembered the man as a steady customer, disinclined to multiply his troubles by starting a fight.  Helszer had collected his trooper buddies and left, but only after leveling a look on Lando that had made it clear the man would remember Calrissian's face come what and whenever.

Now, here, after a storm to harrow hell, comes First Lieutenant Klinen Helszer — just an officer of the line but of a line the other side of legitimacy from the life of star-crossed gambler — standing with that legitimacy pasted to his chest and Abalardiani's vengeance in his happy Imperial hand.

Helszer allowed his gaze to slide to the miner; he waved for an aide to come forward.  The aide held a small droid.  "Legitimizing time," Helszer chuckled,

Swallowing a surge of nausea — Lando felt terrible; there was too much bandaging around his belly and a bitter aftertaste of medicine in his mouth — he swung his legs over the side of the hammock and set his feet flat on solid ground.  Lando considered the odds. 

 _Bad break, kiddo_ , he heard the Lords of Chance snicker, _this Klinen Helszer getting posted to the Impy ship that made Port Dire this time, getting assigned to Relief and on command, on call, when Alyeska's temper subsided.  Our Lady Luck's a fickle lover, don't you know_?

He did, he did.

Helszer graciously motioned up and toward the front of the medical tent.  "Shall we?"

Lando stood.  Helszer stepped away and there was the jet jockey himself, lying behind him, still asleep.   _Good thing, too_.  And yet, Lando couldn't quite recall his angry feeling about Han's antics down below.  They'd misread each other, that was all.  It had happened before.  Once.  Twice.  Only difference was that after today, it wouldn’t happen again.

And, if a man were to stop and count the biggest play of all, he'd know that they had actually won.  Solo was just asleep; Chewie was at the ship.  None of them were dead, none disabled.

It _wa_ s a game, all of it.  Luck flowed where it would, when it would, and every once in a while away from a man.  All that mattered was surviving to live another day.

What could he do now about Hot Rocks Abalardiani or the officer with fifteen thousand reasons for seeing Calrissian left low?  Nothing at all, except to walk with the men, to stand and deal with the men, and plan for tomorrow.

Tomorrow.  Another place, another game.  Paridiso.

 _Go ahead, enjoy yourself now, Hot Rocks_ , Calrissian promised as he read over the legal transfer Helszer had prepared.  Very thorough, the lieutenant.   _Just wait till I get you cornered at the Trumpeter’s tables on Paridiso._

Lando held out an open palm for a stylus; he signed.

*

_Have to get the blaster — blast free - blast the snow — won't be buried alive —where is it — can't move my arm — there —slide the hand down — have to get the blaster —_

Han woke suddenly to the sounds, smells and ambiance of a military quonhut.  Old expectations jerked him up and to attention — after a fashion, considering his bruised muscles and the splinting that held him fast to a cot.

"Easy, spacer," he heard.

Han looked straight up at the trooper.  Man wore no rank, nothing on collar or cap; orderly, must be, and easy with his way of leaning across Solo to free the binding that held Han's left arm stiff against the bed's piping.

"You can sit up now — slowly — here you go."

Han sat, and was grateful for the solid body waiting on him when his surroundings flickered and his bones seemed disinclined to keep him upright.  A moment or two, he leaned against the troop.  He could hear the faint hum of orders murmuring through the man's headset  A comfort the whisper was, telling of connections and clearly defined duties that granted a body a place to be safe and sane when the watch was through.

A moment of rest in a long-gone past was no unwarranted indulgence.

"Up 'n at'em, Cap'n.  Ain't no hospice here and they need you up front."

The voice was new, the manner quite familiar.  Han closed his eyes: let the orderly handle it.

"He needs a minute more reconfig, Pacer."

"Tell that to Rescue.  Get'm moving."

"No-time f'acer," Solo muttered, leaning away from the troop.  Pacers were the bane of Fleet existence, were the ever-instantly resettable alarm that went off five minutes ago, so move it!  "Fleeting f'acer," he finished the ubiquitous troop obscenity.

The orderly chuckled; then, the orderly seemed to pause to consider his patient more closely.

Han froze, just for a second, just a muscle difficulty he complained about out loud.  Nothing the troop should read wrong, no surprise to be found in the long-forgotten curse of a thick-brained spacer who was thinking too slow — _dammit, Solo, you got snow for brains?_ — in dangerous environs.

"Get him out of here!" Snapped the Pacer, walking past them again on his way to the front of quonhut.  "Move it!"

"Yes, sir!"

Han almost said it as well, dizzy fool that he was.

He let the orderly pull him to his feet more sharply than he ought.  Pain would do him good, clear his mushy mind, shut his backward mouth.

 _Who the hell up front wants his face online so badly?_ Han peered around the troop as he stood and saw enough softly squared shoulders at the entry to loosen the staunchest gut.

Wonderful, the Imps must have gotten nosy about something.  Walked forward by the orderly, Han noticed that the two cots next to his were empty.  A quick scan of the kiosk control station brought him a glimpse of a dark face amid the uniforms.  Lando, already on the spot.  They were in for it now.

Solo stopped abruptly.  "Where's Chew — the Wookiee?"  He turned on the orderly.  "There was a Wookiee with us.  Where is he?"

"There was.  He's at the bay."

Cadet Solo with the crisp command in his voice vanished. "The ship!"  Han grabbed the equipment strap crossing the trooper's chest with his good hand.  He insisted, "The _FALCON_ — the ship — is it standing?"

Another spacer might have been surprised how quickly the goodwill-troop could recall Imperial Fleet dignity.  Han only swore at himself, to himself, and went quietly with the orderly.  He didn't even — quite — resent the Imperial hand that now held and turned his free elbow just so, in such a competent and authoritative way that he kept a sharp-time pace to the front of the quonhut.

Upon his arrival, white shoulders parted to reveal their opposite, an officer all dark and silver trim in his topside uniform.  One look at him and Solo knew his troubles didn't lie in the mess of films and equipment displayed on the table between them.

He should have changed his name years ago.  The _FALCON’s_ papers were altered whenever necessary and he should have done the same for Solo.  They had probably punched his past up on a routine check of survivors.  Served him right, too, clinging to what could only be considered dead.

But he liked his name, blast it.  They had taken enough away from him as it was.  That's why he'd never hidden himself more deeply; that's why they had found him at last.

Not that there was anything the officer could do to him.  He'd been kicked out, spat out like rotting meat.  He was dead, dead, dead, for all that Imperial Star Fleet cared.  They had nothing on him, nothing at all.  Han's temper flickered over the old wounds as confidence took hold in him again.   _Go ahead, stare, you sonovyour —_

And yet, Han was worried.  They had kicked him out and he had survived, Chewie and him and his memory of what had actually happened, of what his true offense had been.  If those dark-hearted men whose secrets he had stumbled into found out that the young and too-clever cadet hadn't been conveniently destroyed _—_

"Captain?"  When the officer received no answer, he glanced at the orderly.

"Still uneasy on his feet, sir; that's all," offered the med aide.

"Very well." Black and silver picked up a stylus.  He smiled and said, "You're a very lucky man, Captain."

Relief nearly knocked Han silly.  The officer was after Lando!  Was just grieving the Captain with undue attention on the crew.  Solo cursed his paranoia; these willies were what came of not leaving yesterday behind.

_Your own worst enemy, really, boy.  You know better, yeah, you do, just like down below._

Still, was there something else he had missed here?  Han looked around for Lando, feeling a bit sheepish not to have checked in with Calrissian first.

Lando stood off to the left.   _And look who else is here!_  Abalardiani leaned against a support pole at Lando's right, as pleased as a man could be with both his arms caught in slings and his bushiness shaved away to make room for bacta film.

What the Imps wanted of Lando wasn't to be found in Calrissian's expression.  Han sent a careful finger cue the captain's way.  Nothing.

Odd.

For want of anything else to do, Solo looked at the table, at the mess on it: scattered IDs, gempacks, credits, and piles of grungy films, the strangest of which lay partway under a a thin shiny legalizer in front of the officer.  It took a moment; it took wondering why all those crinkled scraps of sheets were attached to the underlying film, for Han to remember what it was.

_Oh gods, the sabacc game.  The bets._

His attention snapped to the officer.  "What did you say?"

With an expression caught between a scowl and a laugh, the officer tapped the tattered film.  "I said, _Captain_ , you're lucky this was found, aren't you?"

The man positioned the glowing legalizer more securely onto the note.  Han didn't have to read it to know that the droid echoed in officialese everything Lando had signed away as the shelter blew.

The _FALCON_.  His, legally, the moment he keyed in his latest ID sequence.  Han paused, thought to use an old ID pass just to be difficult, just to make the droid hiccup and to see Hot Rocks panic.  He looked at Calrissian, but the man’s attention was somewhere else — probably on Paridiso.

Unless he was bluffing.

*

At last, here was Solo and his own white-shell escort.  Han looked a bit pole-axed; clearly he didn't realize that the weight on his arm had nothing to do with his marching companions, that it was the sleek hand of Lady Luck herself.  Solo had little truck with depending on luck.  He took it when he found it, but mostly  Han just flew straight, shot, and never, never, considered the odds against him.

He'd get caught one day — not today, but one day — without his blaster, without his ship, and then he'd —

But that wasn't Lando's business anymore.  Couldn't kill what wasn’t not around, and sure as tomorrow's coming, Lando Calrissian was no longer part of Han Solo's risk-happy life.

Interesting.  Lando realized that if he did not truly want a bloody revenge on the kid, neither was he interested in dealing with Han.  Nothing personal, no, it was just that his weariness with Solo's predilection for trouble had finally extended to the whole man himself.

As for the _FALCON_ — the starship that always needed attention, that always needed repairs, that needed a man's soul to survive _—_  hadn't he been thinking hard about throwing in his hand?  So, the way of it didn't work out exactly as planned.  The end was still the same:  Han flying his dare-devil games, himself free of unreasonable danger.  Free of a lot of things, actually.

Lando almost smiled.  He could guess that Solo wouldn't understand a word of _this_ freedom's definition.  Well, the kid would learn quickly enough; the _FALCON_ was a bloody hungry bird.

_Yeah, no hard feelings, Han.  Enjoy yourself; I did._

_A man can't really stay mad when he's already moved on._

Someone's restlessness at the table caught Lando's eye.  He rejoined the communal attention on Solo who had his hand poised over the legalizer and a wary look leveled on Calrissian.

Han's smoky eyes, guarded in the best of times were good measures of danger in bad spots.  The quanhut somehow seemed less secure than before, less certain of its barrier against the weather.  The troopers stirred restlessly, and the Lieutenant studied Solo with more intensity than was healthy.

_No, Helszer, those pants with that stripe aren’t surplus._

Whatever trouble Solo was considering — and he was, Lando knew the signs, that little twitch in his left hand, the flash glance to find where the Wookiee was — Lando wasn't playing along anymore.  Hadn't for a while, really.  

"You played a good game, Han," he heard himself say, his elation hidden safely behind a gambler's smile.  "Take her, like I said, fair and square."

Not a glimmer of belief in Han's eyes.

But he kayed his hand on that legalizer, and Imperial officer did the same.

 _HAN SOLO, FREE TRADER,_ CORELLIA, announced the droid first, then   _K. L. E.  HELSZER,_ _1LT., rlf2d_ _,_ _ISS GRAVEN_ ,.

*

The ship would have to make a soft landing when the next time came for that.   Chewbacca stood three paces off the freighter's starboard, glaring at a mess of metal that thought it was the rear left landing gear, grumbling through a mental list of must-do's.  Partial soft landing at least, he amended, acknowledging the more complete other leg.

"This bucket goes up," drawled a voice from under the _FALCON_ 's cockpit, "it ain't coming down."

Chewbacca offered a shrug for the trooper who sat, arms crossed over the levers on the scoop-droid the man and Chewbacca were using to dig the battered freighter free of its snowy embrace.  The rest of the evacuation squad was gone, called back to the shelters or to the shuttle.  Chewbacca didn't know why and didn't care.  He only wished the trooper held back to help him wasn’t so slow.

Hran and the captain were alive.  Little more could be asked of the whimsical forces that governed a being's fate.  Two centuries had taught him that his definition of good luck differed from the Universe's sense of the same.

Chewbacca gestured at the back wall of the bay for his helper, measuring the wide span with a sweep of his arms, hooting and rumbling at the snow that had to be cleared away if the _FALCON_ were to blast off with the measure of safety Calrissian would demand.

The trooper worked his way through the grunts to a rudimentary understanding of what Chewbacca wanted.  He kicked back in his seat.  "You are kidding.  Me?  Alone with this droid?"

Chewbacca counted out the time designation on his fingers for the human. He swooped one hand over an open palm, then shook his head. * _it is not safe to blast off with such a mass so close_ *

"Buddy, it ain't safe to land on Alyeska,” the human argued, “let alone blast off Alyeska.  'Least not in a ship like that."

*Hran is a pilot who can do that*

The trooper cocked his head, listened to his headset.  He shrugged, climbed down the droid and headed for the hanger entry.  "Here's to you hoping your crew has a load of dumb-ass luck, friend."

 

Chewbacca heard the approaching party first.  He stepped up the hatch ramp for higher reception and cocked his head.  What few sounds came through as words were Hran's.  Chewbacca frowned.  The Captain's cons seldom included Calrissian as the disinterested party.  Rather, and especially when in the presence of Imperial troops, Hran was the soul scripted to be silent.

At such times, Chewbacca usually provided the necessary sarcasm, there being few Imperials who bothered to decipher a Wookiee's hoots.

_What in all the forest was the Captain up to?_

Chewbacca felt his stomach ache.  He probably had just enough time to hit the galley. again.  He didn't remember much about the last day or so in the shelter; he only knew that he had been desperately hungry, thirsty, and operating on instinct, not wit.  Burying those memories with a healthy meal begun immediately had seemed an intelligent idea.  If any of the Imperials caused a problem, well, he would just breath on them.

 

"Hey, Wook!" came a familiar call from outside.  "Company."

The lazy trooper waited at the bottom of the ramp long enough to ensure Chewbacca's visual attention, then hurried back to the hangar entrance.  Chewbacca took another bite from the double fishloaf he had brought out from the cooler, then set down what remained of his snack on a shelf just inside the _FALCON_ and padded down the ramp.

He could make out individual words by now, not too many actually and none terribly important.  Still only Hran's voice.  

First to come into sight were a ranking officer and that mud-crawler Abalardiani.   

* _not good_ * Chewbacca slid the loaded length of his bandero across chest.

Four troopers appeared next,: one each flanking the _FALCON’s_ crew, one before and another behind, making room for the lazy trooper who stepped in place beside him.

* _bad, very bad_ * Chewbacca stepped to the side of the ramp brace behind which he had put down his bow.

He sniffed the air currents, balancing the level of ambient threat-scent against the Imperial's tone of voice.  Busy calculating just how much time the _FALCON_ _reall_ y had to get off planet, Chewbacca almost missed something inexplicable and far more important.

The officer was saying a farewell,  "Quick speed to you, Captain."

He was saying it to Hran.

*

Trapped by too much black and white with a partner whose sole contribution to the situation was to gaze distantly over the officer's cap, Han fidgeted.  He shouldn't, he knew.  He should be on top of every action, reacting to nothing but his own plotting, directing the flow of action toward an end amicable to his own desires.

* _Hran!_ *

Chewie!  He'd never been so glad to see that soggy hide —

* _why are you being called captain_ *

NOT NOW, Solo grimaced.

Cautiously, Chewbacca stepped away from the ramp.  The Wookiee looked at the Imps, at Lando, then gave Han his squinty eye. Han held his breath while Chewie, who had that bow of his in hand, decided whether to put curiosity aside or add to the fun.

Not a word from Lando!  Not during that silly signing ceremony, nor for the whole length of the walk from medical to the bay.  Not now, when Chewie had appeared, all hale and hearty.  None of the looks Han shot Lando’s way, no frantic crew-code signals Han made got through the man’s self-absorption.  

Lando Calrissian not talking _was_ Lando Calrissian thinking, and watching and plotting and down-right dangerous.

Could be the Captain wanted Solo off-guard — upset and a shade scared, a tidbit for Hot Rocks with the man’s desire to set the traders against each other.  Abalardiani had to be ablaze with sick anticipation: once away from all witnesses, would Lando still recognize that Imperial film with Han's name on the bottom line once in space?  Would the traders fall into violence?

Problem was, Han wondered the same things.

*Hran?*

Han ignored the Wookiee.  "Yeah, right.  I get the drift, Lieutenant. Time to make quick speed off this rock.”  He waited one last moment for a cue from Calrissian.  No, nothing.   Han's half-hearted grin turned sour, turned into a half-cocked salute he offered the lieutenant.

 _*sloppy*_ Chewbacca hooted.

“That ship better be ready to fly,” Han called out to the Wookiee.  He started to walk out of the mess of them all.  “We’re outta here."

Then, unexpectedly, Lando managed a smile.  Han caught the expression as Lando turned toward Abalardiani and cocked a lazy hand to his forehead, silently acknowledging the man.

"Calrissian.” Hot Rocks nodded.  See you on Paridiso."

 _Oh really?_  Han almost exclaimed.  The ship was his now, right?  He made the decisions _—_ obviously, the way Lando was acting — and if there was one thing Han Solo could guarantee, it was that the _MILLENNIUM FALCON_ was not going anywhere near the credit-vampire world of Paridiso.

Han turned away from the escort and stalked the tarmac to the bottom of the _FALCON’s_ hatch ramp.  Was he destined to always play junior to Lando's needs?  The ship was his, fair and square.

Han Solo was Captain of the _MILLENNIUM FALCON_ now.

Legally, even.

Two steps up the ramp, he heard steps and turned to address a certain _passenger_ , but Lando had come up quietly.  He was already passing Han and the Wookiee, and going through the hatch and into the ship.

"Nice." Han looked at Chewie, nodded his head back at Abalardiani and the Imps standing by the bay entry. "You hear anything going on out there, Furball?"

Chewie shrugged, listened, started to grumble something, until —

"For godsake Chewie,” an irritated voice called from the ship, “don't leave your —".

"Lando?" Han waved at Chewie to keep listening and stepped past the mumbling Wookiee.  Peering up the ramp to check out what had so startled Calrissian, Han caught just a glimpse of the man, saw just an arm put something back in a break in the wall, nothing more.

Now what was that all about?

* _Hran, let me pas_ s*

But whatever bothered Lando was Han's business now.  "I told you," Han hissed at the Wookiee, "find out what they’re saying — wait a minute!  Lando?  If they've touched one bolt of this ship...!"

Han charged up the ramp.

* _Hran_ *  Chewie bleated, * _they did nothing  If you just let me_ _—-_ *

Arms akimbo, Han stood in the Wookiee's way at the ship portal.  He gave the corridor sharp looks up and down, ready to discover sabotage and Imperial mayhem.

"Aw, there's nothing..." Han turned to glare down the ramp, but couldn't see past Chewie mewling worriedly behind him.  "Hell with it all," he said, "get in here.  We're leaving yester —"

Han sniffed.  "What's — forgodsake's, Chewie!"

Reaching for the controls to close the hatch, Solo found a gummy, half-eaten fish loaf sitting on a cross-brace instead.

Han snatched at the smelly snack, beating Chewbacca's grab with ease.  "What kind of ship do you think this is?" Han demanded, waving the loaf wide of the Wookiee's reach and pointing it up the hallway to the cockpit.  "Get in there! We blow this rock in five,"

Chewbacca made one last grab at his lunch, snatched the loaf away from Solo, and hurried up the corridor.

"You hear me?" Han shouted after the hairy back disappearing around a corner.

If Lando heard or cared about a concern that matched his own, he made no sign.  Han eased himself slowly, quietly, down the corridor to the commonroom.  At the break in the hall, by craning his neck, he could see the curve of a bare arm, the flash of a broad brown back as Lando stripped off his clothing.  Han heard the commonroom trasher purr as it was fed.  But Calrissian threw no sarcastic comment down the hall, offered no nondescript whistle that once had meant that a captain had noticed an indiscretion he generously chose to ignore.

 

And that was how their leave-taking went, from the jolting lift off that scattered Imperials in a flood of sizzling snow to the chugging streak out of Alyeska's atmosphere.  Han heard moans and groans from the freighter, hoots and hisses from his co-pilot, but not a word, no, nothing at all, from the erstwhile owner of the _MILLENNIUM FALCON_.

Lando was still in the commonroom — back in, by the fresh clothes he wore — when Han and Chewie finally left the _FALCON_ on its own through hyperspace.  Han glanced at himself, at his torn vest and the ill-fitting old military blouse the medics put under it, at jeans brushed free of surface grim but still filthy.  Someone had given him a quick topside hand-bath; he still stank.  He knew part of the last was exertion, but a building case of nerves was not helping.

Han hoped Lando was as uncomfortable.  What they had here was a situation sure to scare the pants off any spacer, no matter the cut of his cloth.  But he couldn't tell, could he, with the Captain as irritatingly quiet as he was?

Calrissian sat at the far arc of the eating nook, sipping from a mug of cha, his elbows resting on the unlit table.  He didn't let go of the mug as he drank; he embraced it instead between clean hands, newly aglitter with rings Lando never wore when playing Trader.

 _Civilian_ , Han translated.   _Not_ the captain of the _MILLENNIUM FALCON_.  But was it a concession or a challenge?

_Well, now or never to find out._

Han pulled his blaster free of its holster.

A deeper stillness came over Lando.  With close attention, he marked Han's moves and the weight of the weapon on Solo's injured grip; he noted exactly where Chewie stood in the entrance.  Still holding the mug, Calrissian rested his forearms on the table edge and sat back.

Han almost laughed; he would have, if his touchy gut had let him.  Lando had had time to clean up.  That meant Lando had had time to replace the knife lost down-planet with a sister-blade just as wicked.  And Han knew how fast Calrissian was with his sticker.

 _Yeah, sure, Lando, as if you're the only one here worrying about getting_ _spaced._

In truth Lando had the universe to fear in the combination of Han and Chewbacca and a signed Imperial tract that would sail through any court.  For all that the folks portside — those that weren't gamblers, which were damn few — just might not consider Imperial blessings holy, a bet was a bet.

_Of course it was, and a dead loser was —_

Was a sure thing.  Lando understood the portside belief in Making Sure as well as Han did.

If Han had his druthers, he'd throw the damn gun across the room and spend the rest of the jump laughing with Lando and howling with Chewie over the insanity of the past three days.

_Or was it four? Damn, there was so much he didn't quite remember._

No luck of that, though.  Make like he was bringing the blaster up for a throw and Lando would have that sweet slicer deep in Solo's throat.  Then there'd be two bloody bodies and only Chewie to see the _FALCON_ through.

Han almost laughed.  If there was one among the three who didn't give a hoot for owning the ship, it was Chewie.

With great care and holding the blaster as wide of Lando as possible, Solo slid onto the bench opposite Calrissian.  He laid his weapon flat on the table.  "Didn't know if it would work,"  he said, prying his weapon's powerpack free with wide, open, obviously safe movements.  "If that dirt-eater had tried a warning shot with all the chemistry I've got inside this...  Here we go."

The faintest indication of confusion twitched on Lando's still face.  Good!  Confused meant curious meant approachable; Han knew that much about Lando Calrissian.

Han put the blaster's structure aside.  He hunted through the pockets of his vest and, with a wince at an ache in his arm, pulled a driver from a back side pouch.  "But, hey, he didn't and we're all still in one piece."

He worked the fastening at each side of the powerpack — the driver was the same one Lando had thrown at him down below; Han spared a quick grin for Calrissian's benefit — then he flipped the safety catch that kept the workings safe inside and grabbed quickly at a shower of color.

 Cha splashed as the mug hit the table hard.  Four hands moved fast to corral a gempack and more of negotiable jewels skittering, glittering, on the tabletop.

"F'nax, Han!" Lando's silence exploded, "If that trigger-happy kid had _—_ "

"But he didn't!"  Han crowed, happy to hear Calrissian's nagging one more time.  He pulled all the gems Lando caught into a safe pile in front of him.  "Would have been one hell of a bang!" he agreed, adding, "But you worry too much.  How many times do I have to tell you it's never any use worrying about what's done and past?"  

Lando never seemed to learn that.  

 _Oh well.  At least the man’s talking._  

"I couldn't grab all we took in the trading," Han explained, "but it's enough to refit this bird straight."

"With what you've got stashed away..." Lando started out fast, then slowed up on the hint of —

Just a hint, only if Han were looking for it.

— of bitterness.  "You'll do alright," he finished with a dismissing wave of an elegant hand.

Calrissian was cool again, was well-hidden once more within his gambler's facade.  Han watched for a cue on where to go next, but Lando was giving none out.

 _YOU'RE THE CAPTAIN_ _,_ his silence implied, as clear as any hand code.   _IT'S YOUR BUSINESS NOW._

_Yeah, how about that?_

Han rolled the jewels about a bit, daring a response.  "Matter of fact,” he said, “the ship could use a better cargo array.  More versatile."

Eyebrows raised.  Calrissian countered, "Better than what's already the best?"

This old argument was a good one to tease Lando back into a decent conversation.  Han warmed to the subject.  "New SX80 engines," he insisted, "would take care of the extra weight."

"Han, the _FALCON_ doesn't need new engines."

"Does if I want to outrun pirates."

"Outrun —"  Lando's brow furrowed.  "You want to smuggle again?  Remember what happened last time?  Chewie, remember for him what happened at Tenaab?"

Han nodded eagerly, "You better believe it.  We’re sure not going to make any real money piking miners on some godsforsaken _—_ "

"Han, you don't need to _—_ "

There it came again, the hot start that stopped cold.  Lando shook his head, more at himself, then looked off at the auxiliary engine controls and beyond, looked out somewhere Han couldn't follow.

 _Well, that's just_ _—_ Han swallowed an outburst — _just so long as he doesn't intend trouble._  He matched Calrissian's distance. It had been clear for some time that he and Lando were swinging wide of each other.  Chewie had been mewling about it for longer than Han cared to recall.

 _All right, fine._ Han Solo was on his way to make some real cash, finally, and Lando was not to be a part of the game.  Lando was on his way to Paridiso to deal with the likes of Abalardiani.  

Han supposed he was willing to take Calrissian where Calrissian seemed determined to go — a surprise thought, but true.

Not that it was the kind of favor a friend would offer.  So, maybe they weren't friends anymore.  After what had happened down planet, who'd expect more?  They had only started out as portside buddies anyway: close but not too close, partners but not too trusting.  Parting this way wouldn't change that status.

So, what to say next?  Chewie was no help; he just leaned against the entry frame, a furry pile of Wookiee inscrutability.

"I suppose you want to stop at Paridiso." Han grimaced, but he said it.  It was Lando's own damn lookout if he wanted to lose the rest of what he had in Port — so-called — Hope.

If Calrissian felt the bite, he didn't flinch.  "If you can spare the charter," he said evenly, still studying the aux boards.

"Charter?  Dropping a friend off's not a charter!" Han countered.  "Not even if it is to his own damn foolishness!"

"Thank you."

_Damn him.  There are better ways to get a ship than this._

Han rattled the rainbow in front of him.  He cut out nine stones.  He could spare, oh, about quarter of the take and still make his requirements for the _FALCON_.  Han hesitated over the tenth, unsure of the tealite's market value, unwilling to ask the expert.  Oh, what the hell.  Han back-handed this last gem at the others.  No reason to let Calrissian's stoic manner get at him so bad.

Han leaned an elbow on the table and said at Lando's turned head, "Need a stake?"

*

_Pirates.  How far does the flyboy think he can run?  Just what does he plan to smuggle?  Do you want to know?   Do you care?_

Surprised in his thoughts by the tealite offer, Lando looked away from the aux controls and back at Solo.  Han could lie past the average ne'er-do-well without worry; the ease he allowed himself in his behavior was just that much more clever than the usual crook.  But with friends and the truly wicked, he was nothing but honest and straight-forward trouble: a good man who somehow found it possible to ignore misfortune in an indifferent galaxy.

Lando wasn't surprised that Han hadn't survived Star Fleet; the wonder was why the sort that stalked those corridors these days had made the mistake of letting this boy walk out of their review alive.  As for friends, well, their mistake was to let Solo in, dooming themselves to remain in wonder at and in doubt of Solo's own understanding of his motives.

So, Lando looked at the larcenous sincerity spread across Han's face and almost told him to tuck that valuable tealite back into his own pile of booty.

He didn't.  Lando covered the gems with his left hand and allowed Han the fleeting satisfaction of having done the right thing.

It was a shame he couldn't make the compliment permanent.

However, Han wasn't the only one here with a private account nor the only one who knew how to pocket valuables even in the midst of collapsing shelter roofs.  Lando made the glitters roll and rattle back to Han's stash.  "Even is best, Pilot," he said.

Solo looked startled.  Lando could guess Han's thoughts: even, with no ship to Lando's name?  With a raw, forced game to stand as villain between them?

Gods, what more did the kid want?  Lando sighed.  He already knew there was no explaining how he felt.   _Freedom?_  Han would say.   _How can anyone be more free than in the FALCON?_  Some kind of con, Han would think, just another kind of slip-it-by-them persuasion.  He would remain as suspicious, as uneasy, as ever.

Lando stood, almost ready to give Han the fight for which Solo suddenly braced.

_Damn fool way to clear the air though._

Han's hands were flat on the table, away from the gems, away from that grip-gutted, but still usable blaster — oh yes, Lando knew the trick of the weapon's reserve charge.

_Still, if it's the only way —-_

Lando had his own slippery secrets.  Automatically, he calculated the odds.  His feet were solid on a deck in which he knew very grid, every tripping crack.  Chewie; what would he do about the Wookiee?  Would these two in their double-the-number confidence forget the thin, laser-sharp blades Lando wore, or the flick of a wrist that matched Solo's draw on a blaster? That was faster than Chewie could get to his crossbow?

_—- to settle Han's mind on his right to captaincy -—_

Lando laughed.

He laughed out loud; Lando slapped a hand on the table and never mind Solo's uncharacteristic jump.  Chewie's yip only heightened Calrissian's humor.

_Gods!  What a body won't see in itself!_

It was tempting to let Han stew in his confusion.  Best kind of payment for the nail-biters Solo had put Lando through as Pilot.  And yet, they _were_ friends, whatever their business differences or habits over which each fantasized the other's homicide.  Han had wanted a ship; given the chance, he wanted the _FALCON_ ; the game had made that perfectly clear.  But he wanted it clean.  And, Lando told himself, Han deserved it so.

Only one word could settle their accounts in the game that truly mattered.  All the gems in Alyeska and all the Imperial legalese on Coruscant were worthless against a title still held by another man.

Somehow Lando had forgotten to say it; for some reason the one indelible seal had slipped Calrissian's mind.  So much for self-proclaimed indifference.

"My mistake, Han," he admitted.  "I'm sorry.  Even is best, yes, but I'll take you up on Paridiso."  

Lando Calrissian, gambler, civilian, came around the round table.  He nodded at Chewbacca, then held out his hand to Han and smiled.

"At your convenience, of course... _Captain_."

*

 _Paridiso's Lord is quite Chancy; Paridiso's Lady is Luck.  Gamblers, they say, lose their_ _stakes every way that sentient beings know how to wager.  Chewbacca the Wookiee woofed at the glitter and preferred to stay on ship.  The MILLENNIUM FALCON’s captain lingered at the bay's entrance to watch the casual sashay of a friend through the glittering gates of Port Hope.  Lando Calrissian laughed at their worries and sauntered into tomorrow._

_Word at the gateway said the Trumpeter's tables even gave away cities._

 

###

**Author's Note:**

> “Alyeska Wild Cards” is one of a trio of Lando Calrissian stories: "Odds," an origin vignette, and a longer story to be posted soon, ”Masters of the Game: A General Engagement” (1995), about what happens when Lando plays cards with someone who has out-maneuvered Emperor Palpatine for over twenty years. 
> 
> Originally published in the print fanzine, "A TREMOR IN THE FORCE 6"; editor & publisher, Cheree Cargill, Falcon Press (1992).
> 
> Revised and updated, May 2016.


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